Self Slain Gods on Strange Altars
by scumblackentropy
Summary: What do you want me to say, Granger? That you are mine and I am yours? You are. I am. Let's not fuck around.
1. One

A/N:

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Blue Artemis for helping me get rid of OOC-ness and other inconsistencies, to Copper Moss for her incomparably sharp beta-reading eye, to Anoesis for Brit-picking, and to ccognett for helping me make sense of this story, for putting up with my Brobdingnagian e-mails, and for generally being there for me. You guys are awesome. I don't know if you consider me as _your_ friends, but you guys are _my_ friends whether you like it or not.

* * *

_I've just been attacked by dementors and I might be expelled from Hogwarts. I want to know what's going on and when I'm going to get out of here.*_

Hermione sets the scrap of parchment down on the desk with a sigh and throws herself onto her bed. Hedwig stares at her inquiringly from the windowsill with that way that she has, cocking her head as if she is looking past your eyeballs and straight into the back of your skull.

When does childhood end?

The mint-lemon scent of cleaning charms does almost nothing to disguise the odor of dust and sweetish decay exuded by the peeling walls. It is past midnight, but the faint breeze wafting in from the open window weighs muggy and oppressive.

She swipes irritably at a drop of sweat at her hairline.

They are running out of time. Time is a funny thing because you do not notice its passing until you have only seconds left, and each tick and each tock rings true and hard inside your skull.

Hermione recalls the first whispers of war back in their first year. Back when she was barely five feet tall. Back when the idea of a "Dark Lord" thrilled her, fitting perfectly into her fancies of the Wizarding world: a world of gallant warlocks and villainous sorcerers, a world where battles of good against evil are waged every day and good always_always_always vanquishes.

Back when she thought that magic was pillows turning into puffins, and dancing kettles, and bubbling cauldrons.

But now the realities of war have them swathed in its pestilential, impermeable folds. Voices are subdued and strained, shoulders wearily sloped, eyes staring vacantly. They had their first casualty only months earlier.

Hermione places her hands on her face, her palms cool against her cheeks.

She barely knew Cedric Diggory. She presumes he was a kind boy. Once, during the World Cup, he passed her a pint of butterbeer and she smiled at him in thanks. He smiled back, and his smile was warm.

She wonders how many lives will be so effortlessly snuffed out before it ends. How many existences will be reduced to a trifling memory—perhaps a pretty bauble someone once wore, a glint of light on a faintly familiar smile, or a song someone sang all the time in the shower, and it was the most annoying thing back then, but now it is all that remains. Perhaps even a battered pair of glasses that once upon a time perched in front of earnest green eyes.

* * *

Hermione never really believed in God. Her parents were logical, practical types, always standing on the side of science on the big issues.

Why do we see in depth? Why do we enjoy sweets? Why do we have compassion?

Her parents said that it isn't because we _have _to be that way. Rather, it is because the mind is a product of the brain, and the brain is the product of the organizing evolutionary force of natural selection. We see in depth and enjoy sweets because our ancestors had to survive in an environment where falling from a tree meant death and ripe fruit contained precious glucose. We have compassion because, somewhere in the prefrontal cortex, we have mirror neurons that lead us to feel pain when we see others' suffering.

But maybe humans have a gene that makes it so that they cannot help but hope for something higher than themselves, or then again, maybe it is just her. She thinks that if she were born to religious parents, she would have been one of those people that would devote her entire life to her idea of God. She has always been the type of person that believes too hard in things.

When does childhood end?

Hermione thinks it ends _here_, on her knees, her eyes screwed shut, the seconds ticking away in her head, surrendering a clumsy prayer to a God that has never been anything more to her than a smudge in the otherwise logical sequence of human evolution.

It's a very funny thing, time.

* * *

Harry is due to arrive soon. She doesn't know how to feel about it. She _should_be excited. Normally, she would be jumping all over the place by now, counting down the seconds to his arrival. But she knows that he will blame her and Ron for being together while he was stuck alone at the Dursleys'.

Mrs. Weasley is as overbearing as always, clucking over the lot of them like they are bumbling little children. Hermione _just_ managed to get away and rests her elbows on the banisters of the first floor landing. She spies Fred and George on the landing above, sniggering and trying to furtively lower a pair of Extendable Ears to the ground floor. Ginny and Ron are busy with a game of wizard chess somewhere in the house. Below her, the Order members file into the doorway leading to the basement kitchen. She notes that all of them adopt a solemn gait when attending Order meetings, even Tonks. Hermione _humphs _disapprovingly as yet another top secret meeting is held without them. Tonks hears her and turns back, grimacing sheepishly.

As Hermione turns to go to her room the front door bursts open and a tall, billowing figure strides into her line of sight. Hermione squeaks in surprise as she recognises the stringy hair, the protuberant nose, the imperious gait.

There is a sudden, excoriating howl that scrapes across her eardrums straight into her brain and shrilling along the inside of her skull. Snape curses and stalks to the portrait of Mrs. Black and it is with a tint of magic slithering across the air that Mrs. Black's shriek is swallowed in abrupt silence.

And then, quite unexpectedly, Hermione finds herself staring at a black far blacker than should be decent. A face that is all unyielding lines, and hard angles, and contempt.

She whips her shoulders back from the banister, leaning back as far as she can. Her elbows crack from the movement.

She winces. Why the hell is she acting like a twitchy little thing? She doesn't know. She has no idea why she suddenly thought to hide, but she did it, and she can't undo it, and now she has to stick it through the end if she wants to save face. A crack of Apparition tells her that Fred and George have left her to her fate.

She waits for the sound of his footsteps leaving.

One second.

Three.

Eight.

"Miss Granger."

His tone is... civil. She furrows her eyebrows in surprise, thinking, or rather, hoping (_pleaseplease_), that he hadn't noticed her. Or if he did, that he wouldn't bother to acknowledge her presence.

Something tautens in her throat and she clears it with a polite cough.

She brings her shoulders forward, peering over the banister and plastering a smile on her face. He is looking at her in a way that brings to mind something she can't remember at the moment.

"Er... Sorry, Professor Snape. Erm, good evening."

He raises an eyebrow at her dispassionately and stalks off to the kitchen. Lupin's voice swells out through the gloomy hallway as the kitchen door opens and shuts once again with a resounding thud.

* * *

Later, when she is alone, Hermione will remember how he looked standing there with his head tilted up toward her. And then she will think that he was looking at her like Hedwig looked at her: like she wasn't there at all, and in the place of her body was nothing but wasted faded air. And she will almost laugh because this is the silliest thought she will have all day.

And later still she will think that he seemed to fit, somehow. Professor Snape. Right there with the peeling paper and the creaking floors and the inescapable sense of ruin that contaminated the air.

* * *

Harry is being a brat and Hermione is sore at him, but they are friends and so she tries to understand. He was always cheerful, but now he is bitter and contentious and she can feel the rage building up inside of him, layer by painful layer. It scares her, and she hopes that the day will never come when she will recognise him only as a shadow of what he once was, but she doesn't let him know this. She cannot let him know this.

Ron tries to ease the tension with his jokes and his awkward gestures and they laugh for a little bit. There is something hewn between them that was never there before. None of them acknowledge it, though.

Being named prefect along with Ron hasn't helped matters. She remembers the tentative hope in Harry's face as he examined Ron's badge. He looked out of the window as if he were expecting another letter from Hogwarts informing them all of the terrible, silly little mistake they'd made. They'd mixed up the letters and Harry, not Ron, is supposed to be prefect all along.

She knows that Harry thought this because _she _thought it too. She feels bad for it because Ron deserves something that he can call his own, he really, really does, but she knows that if she had to pick, she would have picked Harry first.

She remembers trying not to look too happy with herself and saying something meant to be soothing, but it came out all wrong and hackneyed and stupid. Harry snapped at her and she had to look away because she'd been feeling sensitive lately, and her eyes were starting to water.

But Hermione knows that she can never really stay angry at Harry, _dear_ Harry, so she lets her indignation ebb away until only the sputtering cinders remain.

* * *

She read somewhere that war is part of an inexorable cycle; a rising and receding that varies in players but always culminates in blood. She read that it doesn't ever end, not really, because history forever repeats itself.

But she is fifteen going on sixteen, and there is a solid knot of conviction somewhere between her lungs that they will be alright. That they are together, they are together, they are together.

And they will be alright.

* * *

It is a little unsettling to see Ministry officials she has only ever read about in the _Daily Prophet _and professors she has only ever seen on Hogwarts grounds convening in one place. It intimidates her, to be honest. She will never admit this to anyone because she cannot bear the thought of someone knowing just how unsure of things she really is.

But their presence here reassures Hermione in a way that their careful words never can. She enjoys the loud, unruly mealtimes after meetings that she and her friends aren't privy to. The presence of the majority of the Weasley family transforms the sepulchral gloom of Grimmauld Place into something familiar and comforting.

Mrs. Weasley can cook food like something out of a dream when she is in the mood for it, and Hermione drops her book and heads to the dining room as soon as she hears Mrs. Weasley's voice ringing through the hallway to call them for dinner.

"Watch it!" she yells as one of the Weasley twins Apparates right into the spot she was about to walk into. Harry grips the back of her shirt to steady her.

"Sorry, Hermione." Fred, or George, probably Fred, flashes her a cheeky grin.

She smiles as she notices that not even a moody Harry Potter can resist the warmth and cheer that somehow manage to subsume the undercurrent of fear that has lately crackled in the air.

* * *

Hermione wonders if this is all that it's ever going to be. She used to imagine that war has a definite beginning and end. That there will be some sort of monumental catastrophe, and at that moment they will just _know_. That everything will fall apart all at the same time, and there will be grand battles, and profound displays of courage and valor, and hexes flying left and right and red, blue, yellow, _greengreengreen_. That there will be bloodstained robes and broken wands and tragic demises.

But there is no evidence of war save for the covert glances and hurried whispers and maps being swept away from prying eyes.

She gives Lupin a pinched smile, watching him divert the conversation away from dark things as soon as he sees them walk into the room.

"The Cannons are looking good this year, eh, Harry?" Lupin says a little too excitedly. The other people seated around the table nod and murmur their assent. Harry's lips are pressed thin.

She wishes that it could be enough for her to know that the adults are looking after them as best they can, and to know that they will all have their roles to play in the war soon enough, but it isn't.

There is the feeling of being at the edge of a boundary, at the brink of long and terrible fall. But she cannot know how much of a push it will take to shove them over. Maybe it will come tomorrow, maybe in a year. Maybe it will all end before they slip off the edge, before they have a chance to be _old_ enough, or _clever_ enough, or _brave _enough.

Mrs. Weasley would like that.

She wonders if it is the Gryffindor in her that is longing for more involvement, for more excitement, for reassurance that they are more than pride misborn.

Later, years later, she will look back on this moment and laugh coldly.

* * *

Lavender and Parvati stop talking as soon as Hermione walks in. They smile at her all toothy and earnest, and she is sure that they were just talking about her. It hardly bothers her, though. She smiles back, suddenly feeling a genuine fondness for the giggling girls sitting on Lavender's bed.

It is a scene she's been part of for four years now. Her dormitory is exactly as she remembers, and she isn't sure how to feel about the fact that this is more familiar to her than the perfect pale blue organization of her bedroom back home.

Lavender and Parvati resume their hushed conversation as she starts putting her books away. She changes into her night things, then sits on her bed with her copy of _Advanced Arithmancy_. She is in a capital mood, the weight of the welcoming feast in her stomach imbuing her limbs with a pleasant torpor. She stretches herself out over the covers as the tug of an impending yawn makes itself known in the back of her jaw. Lavender and Parvati fall uncharacteristically silent once again, and she can feel their eyes boring into the top of her head.

"So, Hermione, have a good summer?" Lavender asks.

"Oh, yes, quite good, thanks. You?" Hermione turns to the first chapter, skimming over words she has long since committed to memory.

_The term 'Arithmancy' is derived from the Greek 'arithmos,' meaning number, and 'manteia,' meaning divination. Hence, Arithmancy is the discipline that involves the study of the magical properties of numbers and the use of numerology to organize what appear to be disjointed facets of existence such that they provide insight into a problem at hand... _

"Have you been with Harry and Ron all summer?" Parvati interjects eagerly, her hands fluttering in her lap.

"Part of it, but mostly with Ron. Harry's been stuck at his aunt and uncle's place for a while," Hermione replies more cautiously, wondering where the conversation is going.

"Well, that was probably for the better," Lavender says with a sage nod.

"Excuse me?" Her eyes falter at the end of a sentence.

"Oh, you know what I mean. Harry's been going on about You-Know-Who and _personally_—" Lavender widens her eyes and tilts her chin down for emphasis; Hermione has always hated this particular habit of hers— "_I _think he's just trying to get a rise out of everyone. So it's better that he was shut up in the Muggle world. Is he always like that?"

Hermione feels her back go rigid. She closes her eyes, willing herself to remain calm. The lines around her mouth tighten. The horrid... The _stupid_cow—

"Come off it, Hermione," Parvati simpers at her. "We _know _you're clever—" a strangled noise makes its way through Hermione's clenched teeth—"I know you can see through it. My mum reckons he has some sort of attention thing, like that chemical imbalance or whatever in your brain that makes you crave attention, what do you thin—"

"I _think _you should keep your fat mouth shut," Hermione sneers acidly.

She yanks the hangings shut around her bed and breathes heavily through her nose.

* * *

Hermione's never been one for poetry, but there was a time when she was younger and she had a big 'Poetry Phase,' as her mum had called it. It seemed the proper next step for an intelligent and insatiably curious young lady.

It was, in the end, nothing more than a phase, soon walled up in the mausoleum of forgotten childhood relics.

She decided that she didn't like poetry. She didn't like how there were entire worlds that she could not access, could not _see_, nestled in the in-between spaces of the words, concealed in the intermingling of the technical and the lyrical.

But—and Hermione would never dream of talking about this to _anyone_—if there _is _such a thing as poetry come alive, it would be Hogwarts at night.

There is a certain security in the walls of Hogwarts that is more than just stalwart walls and powerful wards. It is silent and subterranean, beating and rising in a wild wavering horde beneath the stone. It is in the soft _hiss-sputter-hiss_ of torchlight, in the _taptaptap _of her shoes. It is a calming turbulence that she feels permeating the air. It saturates the foundations of the castle, climbing up the soles of her shoes, through thick socks, through her bones, right into the split ends of her frizzy hair.

It's _magic_, is what it is. A pure, palpable magic, devoid of wand-waving and incantations and restraint. It is primitive. Potent. Electric. And she can't help but feel that so long as these walls stand, as they have for centuries, nothing can touch them.

She wonders how many people before her have walked this hallway and felt the exact same thing. It is one of those things that feel familiar, but it really isn't hers to be familiar about. It's very hard to describe, and if she were asked to she will probably just change the subject into something she can spread out and dissect with her precise vocabulary.

It makes her feel… _clean_, somehow, the magic of the hallway. Clean and so very insolently young, like she can be sure of things because the life she feels in her bones will never lead her astray.

Patrolling is her favorite out of all the prefects' duties.

They are supposed to patrol in pairs, but it wasn't too difficult to convince Ron that he had better things to do than shamble about the empty corridors. At first he was reluctant to leave her alone, but eventually he bounded off with an exuberant _Cheers, Hermione_! like it was his idea all along.

The hallway is illuminated by moonlight. The dense, almost painfully bright kind that seeps into cracks and crevices.

And she isn't one for poetry, but she runs her fingers along the stone walls as she walks, and she feels as though she were part of some secret world in a secret time where everything is bathed and preserved in a numinous silver ether.

Keats has _nothing _on Hogwarts at nighttime.

During the day there is the Ministry and Umbridge, and a very paranoid Harry, and an obtuse Ron, and revising for the O.W.L.s.

But at night there are only the tendrils of gossamer magic winding through the air, and she pretends to forget how much everything is changing around her. It is enough, for now, just to know that peace can exist in places like this even in a world sickening with war.

* * *

She is well aware of her horrid habit of picking on her fingernails when agitated. She has a tendency of pulling at uneven edges until her nail bed is torn and beads of blood well on her fingertips.

Her wince is audible as she feels the sting of suddenly exposed flesh under ripped fingernail.

"_Please_, sir."

Her voice is rarefied by black stone into something irresolute and childlike. It infuriates her.

He doesn't look at her, doesn't move save for one violently contained red slash on an essay before him. It is an abrupt and deliberately cruel flick of his wrist. He places it aside without bothering to read past the first damning paragraph. Or maybe he just reads fast, like she does. She doesn't really care. All she can see is the slash he made on her own essay, and the big, red P that glinted at her with quiet disdain from the top corner of her parchment.

"Sir—please—you _must _understand..." She trails off.

His eyes remain fixed on parchment. She feels her ears grow warm as she stills her tongue, trying to convince herself that she is as articulate as everyone says she is. Her nail-picking has become very audible and the sound distracts her, so she imprisons the fingers of one hand in the other. Her palms are unpleasantly clammy. On the wall to her right, an unwholesome green light dances a delirious dance, a frantic, savage carousing of shadows that looks to her like the winking eyes of some unappeased creature. She shivers before she realises that it is merely the firelight reflected by the specimen jars on a shelf.

He continues to ignore her, his quill dripping with wordless red contumely as he impassively proceeds with the butchery of second-year essays. She is exquisitely aware of her heartbeat now, and she is sure that she has never heard anything louder. She would have preferred a verbal flaying to this—to whatever this new tactic is.

She wonders if Harry and Ron were right; maybe she should have just shut her trap and remained in the common room, instead of marching down to the dungeons with all her purposeful, undaunted indignation and refusing to be told what to do. She stomped her foot and tossed her hair like a bloody _child_. They laughed at her, thinking she wouldn't dare confront Snape.

She wonders if she _shouldn't _have.

And she stops this train of thought right here, because Professor Snape was entirely unfair with her, and she intends to correct it.

She takes a deep breath. The kind of breath one takes before leaping off the edge of a precipice one has fallen down before.

"I apologise for taking up your evening, sir, but I refuse to accept the grade you gave me on the essay you assigned last Monday."

He stops mid-slash (_finally, finally, finally_). The red ink bleeds into a perfect circle where he poises the nib of his quill.

It's strange because she never knew how regret can have a taste to it, but it really does, and it is there in the back of her throat, wooden and acrid and entirely bothersome. She wiggles her throat in her schoolgirl socks and tries not to be too obvious about wiping her sweaty hands on the back of her skirt. She forgets about her finger and winces again as the jagged edge of her torn nail catches on the fabric.

He straightens. There is a graceful economy to his movements, a sinuous tightening and sliding of muscles over bone. She knows now that it is too late to back out. He raises his eyes to hers, top lip curling with distaste, as she calls forth all her stores of so-called Gryffindor courage to look right back.

She tries not to blink. She tries desperately not to blink. She schools her expression into the appropriate mixture of apologetic defiance.

"Is that so?" he says. Slowly. Hermione almost takes a step back.

"Yes, sir," she manages to reply in a steady voice.

"And why is that?" It registers vaguely in the back of her head that everything is careful and deliberate with him, every word weighed.

"My essay was rather adequate, sir, and it completely answered the research question you posed. Not to mention the additional research..." She spent four hours in the library, lurking in its dustiest corners.

"Ah, yes, the additional research..." He lets his voice trail off, tracing a long finger around his mouth. She is unable to keep herself from following its path with her eyes. "Remind me how many feet of parchment I assigned for that essay, Miss Granger."

She swallows the lump of trepidation in her throat.

"One foot, sir."

"Correct. And being the insufferable know-it-all that you are, you submitted what length of parchment?"

"Er... two and a half, but if you'd—"

"Two and a half feet," he repeats quietly. "Your other professors may confuse your pedantic affectations with intelligence, but rest assured that I will not. If you wanted a decent mark, you ought to have proven yourself competent at something other than being Harry Potter's... _clever friend. _"

She has never felt so disparaged when someone other than Professor Snape called her clever. She grits her teeth, and fidgets, and _huffs_, and exhales slowly (_slowly, Hermione_), and tries again.

"But sir, I had to include Lucretia Dample's thesis on the dephlogistication of—"

"Tell me, Miss Granger, do you believe that regurgitating research tangential to the subject I assigned means you are possessed of exceptional acumen?"

"_What_? I—you—no!" she sputters, indignant.

Cold derision radiates in waves from his measured, caustic smile.

"Does it make you feel _special_, Miss Granger, when you toss around obscure Potions references and your dithering little friends gape at you in confusion? Perhaps you enjoy lording all your useless facts over everyone in your immediate vicinity. Did you think that I would be seized with delight upon beholding your two and a half feet of utterly useless information?"

She is breathing hard now. He takes a moment to relish in her discomfiture. His tone loses its gently sarcastic lilt when he speaks again, compacting into a hard and jagged edge as he digs the knife in without mercy.

"Indeed, I am surprised at you, Miss Granger. For all your vaunted intellect, it seems that four years in my classroom has not been sufficient to get into your woolly head that I haven't the time for your supercilious delusions."

Her jaw clenches. She was particularly pleased when she found Lucretia Dample's slim volume in the library, thinking that no one else in her Potions class would think to reference her thesis. She thought beyond a doubt that he would have no choice but to award her an Outstanding for her efforts. She tugs on a disordered curl that reaches the small of her back, feeling like a criminal, like an idiot, like an obstinate pigeon-toed fool.

And for one fleeting moment she despises herself for being such a bloody champion of justice.

And then, she is livid. Her vision dangerously clear, her right hand straying to its familiar position on her hip. _How dare you? _she wants to shout. She wants to accuse him of nepotism, of impossible contumacy, of being a right royal bastard. She wants to march over and yank the quill out of his hand and off the essay, where the perfect ink circle is still hemorrhaging. She wants to throw his quill into the fireplace and run away with maniacal glee.

_I am Hermione bloody Granger! _ she wants to insist, _and you have wronged me! _

Then she notices how the shadows seem to have clotted underneath his eyes, how the unearthly light imbues his skin with a tubercular pallor, how the hand that was tracing the lines of his mouth now rubs unconsciously at his left forearm like how Harry takes his glasses off and pinches the bridge of his nose sometimes, when he got quiet. She notices how there is a slight tremor in his grip. She wonders how long it's been since he's seen sunlight. She wonders if he's ever really _seen_ the sunlight, like she and her friends do on the days when the weather is perfect and even _she _cannot bear to hole herself inside the castle to study. She looks away.

He is her professor, but he is a stranger to her. But he is a spy, she knows, and she wonders what that means, and if that is why he looks to her like something cast off and displaced and graceless. She wonders what it is like for him, coming back to Hogwarts after being summoned by his other Master. She imagines it is something like getting out of the car after a long trip, and your legs feel like jelly. Maybe it is disorienting for him like that, because there is a big black line that divides their world, but spies aren't allowed to act like they know the line is there. Maybe they don't _know _the line is there, or maybe the line for him is not big nor black, but pitifully atrophied, seeping shades of grey into everything it touches.

And then, after everything. After the grey.

He returns to sub-par essays and bloody-minded know-it-alls.

It is odd just thinking about it, this _stranger _sitting in front of her, and she wonders if this is what he sees in front of him too. This huffy little girl. His student, yes, but a stranger, too. A stranger he is obligated to protect.

And the regret returns like a punch to the gut and devours all the audacity and conviction and self-righteous fury that she is about to fling in his face.

She feels the sanctimonious tension melt away from her shoulders with every breath. She forces her fists to unclench. She wiggles her toes again, and suddenly, she hates her socks, her stupid white socks that slouch about her ankles.

Unwilling to meet his eyes, she trains her own on the ink pot next to his hand. It looks cold and heavy as it catches and distills the sinister light within its depths.

She feels wrong-footed and foolish. _So foolish_. But no longer angry. All her frustration and resolution recedes into a tiny, bleeding thing.

"I—you... you're right, I'm sorry. For bothering you, Professor," she offers with a timidity that sickens her.

One and a half seconds. And time is _such_ a funny thing because it only makes itself known in moments that are painful, or strange, or endless. Just one and a half seconds, and there is a subtle shift from disdain to curiosity, and he looks at her with an expression that she has never seen before. One and a half seconds, and it is gone. Dissolved into the severe planes and angles that she is accustomed to.

She stands there waiting.

For a sneer, an acerbic comment, a month's worth of detention.

He completes the slash on some poor sod's essay, and once again all she can hear is the ripping sound of quill on parchment and her own hesitating heartbeat. She has an urge to crawl into the floor, into a fissure in the black stone floor, away from his black stone gaze.

Two seconds.

Five.

She loses count.

"Perhaps an addition of two points wouldn't be undeserved."

Her head whips up so promptly that the bones of her neck crack. Two points will bring her up from a Poor to an Acceptable.

But he is gone. She catches a glimpse of a pained scowl, a hand clamped viciously around a left forearm, and robes sweeping into a doorway before the door shuts silently and then vanishes. He is summoned by the grey, and all traces of his work are disappeared from his desk. She is alone in his office with the vile sickly green light. She and her heartbeat and the gruesome, green light in its unspeakable, melancholy madness.

* * *

She glances up from Ron's essay, tugging at her cramped fingers with her other hand and sighing. Ron is loads behind on homework, and it's only been two and a half weeks since term started. As if in response to her unvoiced remonstrances, Ron splutters on his spit for a few moments before calming down to a steady snoring once again.

She exchanges an exasperated yet entirely too amused glance with Harry. He rubs his eyes and stares back at the fireplace, a slightly vacant slackness to his features. His temper, lately simmering too close to the surface, daunts her. But it is when he is silent that she is the most wary.

His Adam's apple bobs once, twice as he swallows. He looks older, but not quite old enough. His dishevelled hair and boyish grin are in stark contrast against his broadening shoulders and the angular cut of his jaw. His limbs are longer, but he carries himself with the air of someone unaccustomed to the strength of his own body. She feels a surge of affection for Harry, _dear _Harry, and smiles at the three inches of wrist sticking out from the too-short sleeves of his robes.

They are together, and they will be alright. And maybe it is faith, or maybe it is youth, but she _knows_ that it is _real_, and this is enough for her.

* * *

She lovingly places an assortment of rubbish on top of a woolly hat, grinning with pleasure. Harry and Ron's conversation stutters to a halt as they gape at her.

"What? They're for the house-elves."

She convinces herself that it isn't fraud, not really, not if she intends well.

* * *

"Alright, Hermione?" a sleep-rasped voice greets her as she clambers into her dormitory.

"Just go back to sleep, Lavender," she whispers brusquely.

There is an affronted silence and a rustling of sheets. Hermione bites her lip.

"I—sorry, Lav, I've just had a rough day, that's all."

Lavender mutters under her breath and yanks the hangings around her bed.

The guilt coils tightly in her stomach. With a sigh, Hermione makes her way to her bed, tiptoeing around Parvati's shoes (black patent leather, not sensible at all) and Lavender's copies of Witch Weekly ("Pixie Dust to Enhance Your Bust: Does it REALLY Work?") strewn carelessly across the floor. They are pathologically untidy, frivolous gossips, the pair of them. And they treat Harry like he is some barmy, attention-seeking prat. But Hermione is not the kind of person that can be so callous to someone without feeling terrible afterwards.

She throws herself on top of the covers. Crookshanks purrs and arranges himself into a heavy ball of warmth on her stomach. She pushes her hair into a bushy pile on top of her head and secures it with an elastic. Her hair can be a choking hazard when she lies down and she hates waking up with hanks of it in her mouth. The herbal, slightly mustard-y scent of essence of murtlap is strong on her hands.

The scent brings her desultory thoughts back to Harry, then to the words permanently etched onto the back of his hand, then to that vile, perfidious toad of a woman, Umbridge.

She gets so _angry _just picturing her stupid little bow, her bloated face, and her nauseating smile in her mind, and the image draws a fresh wave of fury into her spine. Crookshanks raises one bleary eye to look at her, disturbed by her quickened breathing.

"Sorry, Crooks..." she whispers, rubbing a finger into the coarse fur behind Crookshanks' ear.

The stupid hag jeopardizes not only their chances at getting O.W.L.s in Defense, but also their ability to actually defend themselves from the Dark Arts when Voldemort openly attacks.

She looks around the room, expecting looks of incredulity and discomfort at the mention of his name.

Vol.

De.

Mort.

His name is cumbersome even in the privacy of her mind. Maybe if she uses his name more in her thoughts, she can speak it with the same sort of mutinous nonchalance that Harry does.

She does not know how his name holds such power over so many. It is a series of syllables, nothing more. A brief opening and closing of lips, a rolling of the tongue.

When she first heard of him, his name was inconsequential to her. She doesn't know when this changed. Perhaps it was when she learned of her own blood, and of how his life's ambition is to see it seeping into the dirt where it belongs. It made it personal, somehow, his name and his hate and his violence.

"Voldemort," she tests the sound of it on her tongue, and it tastes like a smudge of tar.

An unnatural quiet seems to shroud the room, and the darkness suddenly seems far too solid and unforgiving.

She shivers, then shakes her head, releasing the breath she didn't realize she was holding.

Maybe Harry can teach her how to say it like he does. Harry can teach them a lot of things.

_You think it's just memorizing a bunch of spells_*, he said, _like you can think straight when you know you're about a second from being murdered, or tortured, or watching your friends die*._

But what do they have, apart from their cleverness, and their research, and their spells? What can she do but prepare in the only way she knows how?

One day, she tells herself. One day there will come a time when they will stop waiting with their hands in their pockets wishing through windows glued shut for a place in this war that nobody wanted.

* * *

She doesn't feel any different at all. She examines her face in the mirror. The soft purple shadows of early morning lend her features a slight somberness that she doesn't like on herself because it reminds her of how her mum looks when she is angry.

But, apart from the shadows, Hermione doesn't look any different.

She angles her head to the right, bringing one finger up to trace the line of her jaw, her chin, her chapped lower lip.

Of course, she didn't expect to wake up this morning suddenly looking like an older version of herself. But she does this every year, every time the nineteenth of September comes around. She scrutinizes her face in the mirror, squinting her eyes, searching for proof that an entire year has been pulled out from under her feet.

* * *

Neville, with his earnest, round face and tentative smile. Dean and Lavender bickering and bumping shoulders. The Patil twins, Parvati with her hair cascading down her back and Padma with hers in a thick plait. Cho Chang and a russet-headed Ravenclaw tittering into the hollow of her palm. The entirety of the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Luna Lovegood looking vaguely perturbed. The Creevey brothers, Macmillan, Finch-Fletchley, Abbott, and even more people that she doesn't know by name whose faces she's seen almost every day at the Great Hall for four years.

All of them are staring at Harry with bated breath as he speaks. A few look doubtful, and one in particular voices his objections quite obnoxiously, but they all end up signing her parchment anyway. Her hair has been whipped into a hopeless mass of snarls by the wind outside, her butterbeer is tepid, and her senses are thoroughly offended by the general griminess and goat-tinged musk of the Hog's Head. But she is grinning widely, her cheeks aching as a triumphant pride threatens to bubble over in her chest. This might be her best idea yet.

Hermione has a lot of big dreams for herself. Some days, though, when they are all together like this, she thinks that the most you can ever really hope for in life is a cold drink and good friends. And maybe, this is enough.

Later, much later, she will fondly remember the Hog's Head as a much cleaner, much brighter place.

* * *

What is this word, loyalty?

It's easy enough to define, especially for a Gryffindor. But it's never that simple, is it? 'Loyalty' is one of those words that you can't just point to something and say here's loyalty like you could with, say, the word 'quill' or 'chair.' And yet, loyalty is far more solid than either of those. People _die _for things like loyalty. As far as she knows, no one has ever waged a war for a quill or a chair.

If loyalty is that thing she feels, that tug deep inside of her that tells her she belongs with her friends, then what do you call that thing inside of other people that tells them to stand with Death Eaters? What do you call that conviction that moves them to stand where _they _belong?

Cowardice, is what Sirius would likely say.

Her wand twirls in her loose grip. She told Ron earlier tonight that she would take his patrol shift. He eagerly complied, lavishing her with extravagant praise that she barely noticed as she clambered out of the common room. She needed to be alone after their conversation with Sirius in the Floo.

_Well, better expelled and able to defend yourselves than sitting safely in school without a clue_*, Sirius said, clearly approving of the initiative they've taken in forming a secret defense group.

Hermione likes him enough, but she is well aware of his penchant for reckless heroics. Sirius Black isn't exactly the paragon of pragmatic, well-thought-out courses of action. Maybe his approval is a sign that they should go in the opposite direction. And then there's the matter of Umbridge's dumpy little arm clawing at Sirius' head in the fireplace. She evidently knows that _someone _in the castle is in communication with a wanted man, and it won't take her long to reach the right conclusion. Maybe it's just too much of a risk. Maybe—

She opens her mouth in a silent gasp as the floor vanishes from under her foot, throwing out her arms for balance. There is a nasty swoop in the pit of her stomach. For one vertiginous, uncertain second, she can almost feel the synapses in her brain desperately firing electrochemical impulses as her hands find no purchase. She braces herself for the inevitable thud of her cheek against the hard floor.

But her left hand catches hold of the railing, and she pulls herself up automatically, her gasp finally escaping from her lips in a hot rush of air. She takes one moment, two, before straightening and pulling herself together. The knuckles on her left hand are red and raw from scraping against the uneven stone wall.

It's funny how you can just _find_ yourself in one place without knowing how you got there. She used to think it was impossible, because how bloody _ out of it _would you have to be to not know where you are going?

She _finds _herself at the threshold of a windowless corridor, a long stretch that brims with a cloying darkness. This isn't her usual route; the dungeons are patrolled by the sixth-year prefects. She quickly calculates the distance to the Gryffindor common room and determines that it will take her less time to go forward than to turn back. If she takes this corridor, there will be a passageway at the end that contains a staircase going all the way up to the seventh floor, and from there she can head off to the tower.

She sighs in annoyance.

"Lumos."

She tugs her robes tighter about herself and shuffles forward.

It's… _creepy_, almost as if the darkness is amplifying the hesitant crackling of the fire on the brackets. There is a hint of primordial must in the air, a tenuous silken strand of a scent, and she feels as though she is walking through the castle's most ancient artery.

In all her years at Hogwarts, she has never walked this corridor at night. She tries to imagine it filled with the bobbing heads and raucous voices that populate the hallways in between classes. The torches are farther and farther apart as she reaches the middle of the corridor, and she eventually walks past the last one, its fire quivering feebly behind her before the corridor is plunged into complete black.

She isn't afraid of the dark, but she isn't sure what time of night it is. And one never knows what might be lurking in the dungeons of Hogwarts. The bleak, bluish light of her spell illuminates only about a meter of corridor in front of her. She trains her eyes on the floor, not keen on having another flailing incident. The smell of decaying earth is much heavier here.

A movement from the corner of her eye catches her attention.

She turns and sees nothing. Her blood congeals into an unctuous sludge in her veins, and her heart, powered by the adrenaline from her earlier misstep, sputters furiously in her chest.

She knows, rationally (_rational_, Hermione, _be rational_), that it is probably a trick of the scant light. A shadow caught up in an ecstatic dance on the wall. An aberration caused by her own tired eyes. At the worst, it is a rule-breaking student prowling about the corridors. And she is perfectly capable of handling errant students.

"Nox," she whispers. By now she is properly indignant, and she intends to give the wandering delinquent a fright to teach whomever it is a lesson.

She creeps down the corridor with as much stealth as she can. She doesn't like sneaking around, but being friends with Harry Potter and Ron Weasley means that she is rather good at it.

She reaches the end of the corridor, squinting accusingly at pools of shadow. It is even darker here, if that is possible. Darker and colder.

There is that moment when she feels someone _breathing_ behind her, which is ridiculous because you cannot _feel_ someone _breathing_. Somewhere in her mind, in the recesses of her skull, there is a sense of impending danger.

And in her skeptical terror she hears a slipping sound and dimly registers that it is her wand soaring out of her grip. She twitches and jumps after it instinctively, briefly imagining how ridiculous she must look. She feels as though she is regarding herself from a distance, wondering why her limbs aren't moving fast enough, wondering when the panic will finally seize her.

There is the soft thud of flesh hitting unyielding stone, then a hand circling the back of her neck, a wand digging a hole into her temple, and her face angled painfully against the wall.

There is a hoarse whining sound, and she blinks as she realizes that it is issuing from her throat.

Her teeth are pressed against the flesh inside her cheek, and a familiar metallic tang touches her tongue.

The stone is cold, damp, rough.

The smell of earth clogs her nose.

She squirms, but still the hand tightens around the muscles of her neck.

The wand digs deeper, and she wonders if it will leave a permanent depression in her skull.

"What are you doing here?" a voice hisses hotly in her ear.

She can recognize that voice anywhere, and she does not know whether to be more or less afraid.

"Pr-Professor Snape?" she chokes out, deciding on less, and hoping (praying) that she isn't wrong.

"Granger?"

The hand releases her neck and tugs at her upper arm, swiveling her body around. She twists her arm away from the vice-like grip and attempts to take a step back, but the wall behind her halts her retreat. A burst of light burns her retinas. She raises one hand to shield her eyes, another to rub at the back of her neck.

"Again, what are you doing here?" She can just make out the tall figure in front of her, a blurry accumulation of abyssal black, his illuminated wand shining in her face. His tone is the same vaguely mocking one that he uses in class, as if he hadn't just_ throttled _her seconds ago.

"_Answer me, _girl!" Now he sounds as if he is trying very hard not to throttle her again.

"I—patrolling, sir." She hasn't done anything wrong, and yet her voice is meek and placatory.

"I seem to recall this hallway being assigned to Daphne Greengrass. Furthermore, it is well past curfew, and prefect patrols are to end fifteen minutes before then. I will ask you one last time, _what are you doing here_?" His voice sends a frisson of cold dread down her spine.

He brings his face closer to hers, lips contorted into an ugly sneer. She tilts her head back, the back of her head resting against the wall. His eyes are red rimmed and hideous, and they somehow capture all of the black in the hallway and make the previously stifling darkness seem anemic and innocuous. She is afraid because he is looking at her in the way that he looks at Harry, like he _hates _every single particle of her, when she knew she was always just the yippy little sidekick to him. He smells horrible, a sweet-sour clinging stench that she can't quite place.

He raises his left hand as if to grab her arm again, but he doesn't touch her. His fist hovers by her shoulder, clenching and unclenching. He has awful teeth.

"I just lost track of time, I swear! I was on my way back to the Gryffindor tower, I—" She swallows, and his eyes flicker down to her throat. "I didn't realize where I was going, and I thought I saw someone, so—"

"Do not. Trifle. With me. Granger," he bites out.

Then he moves back slightly, eyes narrow and calculating.

"Perhaps your circumspect behaviour is to do with your illegal... Defense Against the Dark Arts group?"

"No, of co—" she catches herself just in time— "What secret group?"

But it is too late. His eyes glint with triumphant malice.

"Did you really think you could keep it a secret? That a large group of students, the majority of whom are Gryffindors, milling about in the Hog's Head like imbeciles wouldn't be found suspicious?" He fixes her with a look of supreme contempt.

Slowly, his words penetrate the squall in her mind, and she bristles. All her earlier misgivings about forming the group disappear in the face of his taunting sneer.

"It was…" She takes a moment to gather all her words and all her willpower in her mouth.

"It was all my idea," she announces with an insolence that she's never shown her professors before. "I forced my friends to sign a contract. Are you going to expel me?"

She is surprised at the calm tone of her voice, a heedless bravado hurtling through her veins. She takes a step forward with an impudence she doesn't feel and tilts her head back further to look him in the eye. His eyebrows rise slightly. She is close enough now to feel the warmth of his body radiating through his robes.

Strange, that.

"Was it really?" His tone is normal again, with just a hint of aspersion simmering below the surface. "I had thought that the self-righteous heroics were more Potter's specialty."

He takes a full step back from her. She feels the warmth of him recede and shoves her hands in her pockets.

"_Heroics _are a Gryffindor specialty in general, Professor," she says airily, ignoring the self-righteous part. "And it isn't right, whatever Professor Umbridge is attempting. I have no intention of sitting at the sidelines unable to defend myself when Volde—"

It is a moment of stupendous pressure sucked in and suddenly exploding outward like shards of glass. The speed with which his demeanor switches back to a spittling rage is astounding. His lips are white, his nostrils flare, and the muscles of his throat are thick cords straining against skin. She barely keeps her feet from stepping back. She expects him to scream at her, but when he speaks it is in a frighteningly low whisper. An almost depraved light ignites in wells of black.

"Do not speak his name, you stupid fucking girl."

She gasps softly. His eyes once again flicker to her throat before returning to bore into her eye sockets, glaring holes into the back of her skull. She feels her heart throbbing in her throat, her blood pounding in her brain. He stares at her for two more heartbeats before stepping back altogether, regarding her coldly from a distance. There is a stoic rigidity to his stance. He is a tempest fitted to a frame, a fury bottled and corked.

"Do you think anything you do will make a difference, Miss Granger? Do you think memorizing spells from a book will save you when the Dark Lord returns to claim what is his?"

She opens her mouth and a strangled sound claws its way out of her throat. His features are impassive, but his eyes retain an echo of manic light. She thinks, somewhere in the shuddering mass that is her brain, that this scenario is all wrong, because he is angrier than he needs to be and she is more scared than she should be.

"Do not confuse your puerile attempts at rebellion with feats of valor. You know nothing of what it is to truly fight," he whispers through a nasty smile, his voice phlegm-cracked into something ugly.

And... just like that.

In one perfectly crafted sentence, honed and tapered and drawn and slung into the pulpy heart of her insecurity.

Contained in one abrasive curl of the lip.

All her anger toward Umbridge and Fudge, her fear for her friends' safety, her determination to abide by her own principles, all her _loyalty_ is dismissed. Reduced to a callow, impotent fancy in the head of a barely sixteen-year-old girl. Reduced to stupid little words, as harmless as '_quill_.'

Or '_chair_.'

Or '_hope_.'

Something brackish and disgusting swirls in the back of her throat and it feels like she just failed a test. A thousand tests. It feels exactly like that, but so, _so _much worse.

His voice swirls perniciously in her head. His words wind themselves around her own churning thoughts, tearing and strangling, until they are all she can hear like some disgusting, eviscerating mantra throbbing beneath her skull.

_Know-nothing._ Know-Nothing. _Nothing-Know-Nothing_. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

She cannot stand the midnight of his eyes. She screws hers shut.

"Return to your common room at once, Miss Granger. Ten points from Gryffindor."

* * *

A/N:

*Taken directly from canon.

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	2. Two

October is solemn, she thinks. Solemn. And regal. And doleful.

Harry and Ron are casting reproving glares at the enchanted ceiling, all the while lamenting the fact that they will have to practice Quidditch in the rain once again. She smiles because it isn't really too bad. The mass of pale, ponderous grey roiling in the ceiling above them is rather pretty. In a melancholy sort of way. In a way that promises the unstoppable. The end of the wait. The deluge.

She says something to this effect. Harry gives her a withering look, the one he uses to let her know that he thinks she is full of it. Ron gapes at her.

Eight minutes.

It's been a full eight minutes since she last glanced at the staff table. Already her rebel eyes are sliding furtively in the direction of his seat. Have been, in fact, for the past six out of those eight full minutes.

She just went through the major participants in the Goblin Wars of the eighteenth century in her head, then the details of the formation of the International Confederation of Wizards. The names of the Supreme Mugwumps from the Wizarding community of Liechtenstein are as familiar to her as those of old friends, but her attention falters nonetheless.

He wasn't there when she last looked, and he probably won't be there if she looks again.

Unless...

Maybe he just had to grade a few papers, or tend to a recalcitrant potion, or _something_, before sweeping out of the dungeons and heading to the Great Hall to scowl hawkishly at the students.

Yes, it's entirely possible. _Plausible_, even.

Maybe he's heading here right now. It isn't such a long way from the dungeons, and with his towering stride and brisk pace, the trip will be even shorter.

He will billow through the halls and stop only to terrorise an errant first year or two. Then he will emerge from the doorway behind the staff table and loom there for a few seconds, daring anyone to make eye contact. He will give a terse nod to Dumbledore, and perhaps to McGonagall if she looks in his direction. He will cast a sweeping glance across the Great Hall, straighten his robes, then climb the three steps to the dais on which the staff table stands. He will pull out his chair, an elaborately gilded one that he finds unnecessarily ostentatious, and he wishes he could Transfigure it into something simpler but that would be in bad form. He will sit, he will glare, but he won't eat. He will place his elbow on the table to trace a finger around his mouth like he always does, or perhaps up and down his goblet, leaving a trail in the condensation. And when he lifts his hand, the cold droplets from his goblet will cling to the tip of his finger.

Surely he's sitting there right now, his eyes scanning the four House tables. He will start with Slytherin, of course, to the far left. Then Hufflepuff, then Ravenclaw, then—

She looks up.

_Oh._

Well.

Well.

Of course he isn't here. He probably hates having to dine here. Maybe he has the house-elves bring his meals up to his rooms when he isn't required to make an appearance. Merlin knows how fervently she longs for that privilege.

She sets her fork down on her plate and tries to listen to what Ginny turned to say to her. The various noises in the Great Hall coalesce into a single high-pitched hollow droning that scatters her thoughts into disarray.

* * *

They call themselves Dumbledore's Army. She was against it at first, but it grew on her. Naming their group means that it is something of an official affair, and Hermione likes being in charge of official things.

She smiles to herself, watching as Ron successfully disarms Neville for the fourth time in a row.

It is childish, the name they decided to call themselves, and Gryffindor to the very core. She imagines the benignant, faintly condescending chuckle with which Professor Dumbledore would respond if they told him that they formed an illegal army in his name.

Many of the members are incompetent, saying the incantation wrong or failing to perform the appropriate wrist movements. Most of them are far too enthusiastic, arcing their wand arms widely and sending the spell careening off toward the bookcases and the piles of mattresses. The red jet of light that indicates that the charm is performed correctly is mostly absent. Michael Corner manages to make Terry Boot's wand wiggle erratically out of his hands. Ernie McMillan is performing some sort of grand twirling movement with more body parts than necessary, giving Colin Creevey enough time to knock him back before Ernie can say the incantation.

And Neville... _Dear _Neville.

But despite all the shoddy performances, there is an undercurrent of... _something _in the air. A vibrant thrill of high spirits and sheer excitement and impatience. An indefinable feeling of youthful invincibility. The painful uplifting awareness of being part of a generation born into war.

It isn't being fearless, exactly. They are all so slight, the lot of them. All of them steeling themselves for disaster. But it is a good feeling.

Like everything can be burning tomorrow, and the stars can shatter and the earth can roar but them? They will be alright, the lot of them.

Because they are together.

And because of Harry Potter.

He is roaming about the practicing pairs, giving out advice, straightening a wand arm, trying to maintain a look of stern approval on his face. She knows that he is discomfited. It is evident in the angle of his shoulders and the tension of his jaw. Just a week ago, a lot of the people in this room were gaping at him as he walked through the halls, whispering about how _that Potter boy _was once again blabbering rubbish about Voldemort's return.

He is very good at this sort of thing, though. At seeming completely solid and dependable, even if _he_ thoroughly doubts himself. At being this immovable structure you can count on to take the brunt of the heat. He is greatness disguised in unruly hair and a skinny face with the glasses that always slide down his nose. He is boldness and strength and _hope _among a roomfull of children. She feels a sudden impulse to go over to him and ruffle his hair proudly.

_Nothing_, a voice echoes wickedly in her head.

No. _No_. No.

They are unlearned and inexperienced. And a lot of the people that came to the Hog's Head were just hoping to hear a first-hand account of Cedric Diggory's death. And they probably won't stand a chance in an actual duel with actual Death Eaters. But sometimes you realise that you cannot live without certain things, and sometimes these things are taken away from you and you have to fight for them, and maybe burn for them, and perhaps die for them.

And this, she thinks, _this_, exactly, is what it means to be brave. And loyal. And a Gryffindor.

"Hermione," Ron comes sidling up to her, grinning with self-satisfaction. "It's your turn to practice with Neville."

"Oh, alright. Come on, then, Neville." She gives him an encouraging smile. He grins back nervously.

They face each other and raise their wands.

* * *

At night she finds herself heading down the same steps at the same time wading through the same cabalistic darkness with the same anxiety clicking in her throat. Then she is at the same spot, waiting for a movement, a voice, a grip. Waiting for the bitter touch of stone.

But there is nothing. There is no one. She heads back to her common room. Head down, pace brisk.

* * *

"—no, see, it's more of this sort of wave—" Hermione demonstrates the movement.

"And it flows into a jab at the end." She thrusts her wand forward.

"Reducto!" Lavender yells, pointing her wand at a small footstool. It wobbles for a bit, then topples over to the floor with an offended clunk. She groans in frustration.

"_Why_ isn't it _working_, Hermione? I did exactly what you said!" Lavender whines.

"Well, you have to put more force in the jab. Oh, and enunciate the syllables clearly, don't string them together. Here, let me show you."

She closes her eyes for a second. Concentrating. Feeling the familiar tingle of magic rising under her skin and coursing to the very tips of her fingers. She aims at a small table in the corner.

"Reducto!" There is a loud crack and the table splinters into pieces. Lavender looks at her in despair.

"It's alright, Lav. You'll get it, I promise."

"Oh, are you doing the Reductor curse, then?" Parvati skips up to them.

"Yeah—er, do you want me to show you how to do it?"

"No, it's alright, I've got it. Reducto!"

Parvati aims at a table identical to the one Hermione broke, and her motions are perfect. There is a flash of white, a deafening bang, the smell of smoke. The table lies in a pile of ash. Several people turn to look, wands aloft, mouths hanging slack.

"Bloody hell, Hermione..." Ron breathes from across the room, where he was duelling with Seamus.

"Oh, erm, it wasn—"

"That was... wow. _Wow_. Why didn't you teach us how to do that?" Harry asks her.

She feels her cheeks heating up.

"No, it wasn't me, it was—"

"Oh, come on, Hermione. You're the cleverest person in this room. I think we all know who did that just now."

She is back to nail picking.

"Harry, thank you, but no, it really wasn't me—"

"Herm—"

"Er, Harry... _I _did the spell. It wasn't Hermione..." Parvati cuts in, shrugging her shoulders with good nature and smiling modestly.

"Oh. Oh—er, great job, Parvati, that was excellent..." Harry trails off. The rest of the D.A. scuttle back into pairs and resume their practicing, and once again the Room of Requirement is filled with bangs, yelps of pain, and intermittent flashes of light. Harry walks up to her, looking distressed.

"Sorry, Hermione, I _really _thought it was you."

"It's fine, Harry."

"I didn't mean to put you on the spot like that. But, I mean, _you _could have done that easy— you're the best at spe—"

"Harry. It's fine, honestly."

"Yeah? Right, then. Well, carry on, I guess..."

"Alright."

"Okay."

* * *

Meeting at the Hog's Head was a mistake. Even Madam Puddifoot's would have been better.

Anytime now Umbridge can burst in the door to the Room of Requirement, eyes bugged out, jowls aquiver, waving yet another one of her Educational Decrees in her stupid prejudiced little sausage fingers.

It's strange because there is no sign of Umbridge, no sign of having been found out. It's even stranger that Professor Snape never brought the issue up again.

Hermione resolves to be more careful next time.

* * *

What about charmed notes? Students pass each other notes all the time. It's practically a rite of passage. She can put the message in code. Runes will work. She can make it look like something frivolous and completely unworthy of attention.

No.

She can't very well send the notes out in the Great Hall during mealtimes. Umbridge will get far too suspicious if the same students get the same flying bit of paper every time they have to set a meeting for the D.A. And she is certain the owl post is being watched. And it will take too long to charm each note to only open for a specific person.  
Then, there is the matter of breaking the code. She doesn't trust all the members of the D.A. to properly decipher what the message actually contains.

Her bottom lip finds its way to its familiar position between her teeth. What a terrible thing to think. Of course her friends are fully capable of cracking a simple code. But still...

She draws a line through _charmed notes_ on her list.

* * *

Harry is staring at her with concern. He probably thinks that she is involved in some great personal cataclysm, and this is why she cannot answer such a simple question. It's rather endearing, really, his ability to jump to preposterous conclusions. Ron, on the other hand, looks slightly mollified now that it is evident to everyone that she does _not_, in fact, hold the answers to everything. She gives him her most waspish glare. He arranges his features into a caricature of contrition.

"Miss Granger."

His voice is startling in its proximity. He was just _there_, standing in front of Parkinson's cauldron when he asked her the question.

She looks up to find him blotting out the light in front of her into tyrannical black. It feels like his glare is mincing her to bits, and a strange, wet sound comes out of her throat. It is a booming crack in the quiet of the classroom.

"Perhaps you would be so kind as to enlighten us with your boundless knowledge."

Everyone is silent in that way that people are silent when they are collectively anticipating some gigantic collision. Even their cauldron-fulls of potions daren't bubble.

"I will not. Ask you. Again."

"Th-the difference between..." She whispers, desperate for any sound, anything at all, to break through the strange stillness crammed in her brain.

Hermione did not raise her hand because she does not know the answer. She cannot remember what the difference between bundimun secretion and tincture of bundimun is. She cannot remember because of _him_ standing breathing looming hardly moving in front of _her_. Because he has one hand behind his back and the other (jagged blue-grey veins pulsating under ashy white) resting on the edge of her table. Because he is looking at her as if she is a lump of noxious rot at the bottom of an unwashed cauldron.

She tries to do herself justice and look him in the eyes, to prove herself worthy of the name Gryffindor and dig for purchase in his eyes, but she remembers a night when they were aglow with a fervid brutality and the closest she comes is the point of his cheekbone . She stares at a button on his throat, instead.

And the seconds pass. And pass. And pass. Each tick and each tock a death knell to the reputation of Hermione Granger, brightest witch of her age.

It's a funny thing, time.

A nagging voice in her head is telling her to stick her chin up and say something (something-something-_anything_). She feels her lips move of their own volition, trying to formulate words that she cannot think of.

Her deliberately systematized thought process fails her and all that comes out of her mouth is a pathetic stutter.

He gives her a look of such utter disdain that she almost thinks she deserves it.

He stalks away and she can hear his voice, mocking her and all her books and all her words to the rest of the class. She and her infantile delusions of intellectual superiority. And she isn't certain if it is his voice that she hears in her head, or her own. There is an unbearable pressure thudding behind her ears that transforms all sound into a steady, beating, grey whirr and little squares of light bleeding out in front of her eyes and the pressure morphs into a warmth that she cannot stand andshehastogetout—_out!_—has to escape to a place where his vitriol can't reach her.

She hears Harry and Ron's voices from a distance, from underneath the layer of viscous liquid that is bathing her senses. She knows that they have leapt to her defense. She knows that she has to tell them to stop, that it's alright, that his words have absolutely no effect on her because they are not true. But the liquid makes its way down her throat and it coats her muscles and it seals her teeth shut tight and it is as vicious as he is. And it forces her to silence.

Hermione loosens her grip from the quill she does not realise she is holding. The vague, needling voice in the back of her skull returns to tell her that she is made of stronger stuff, and that she should stay. But she ignores it.

She ignores it and flees.

* * *

"Shit. Shit. Shit. _Bugger_. Shit."

She is sitting in a damp alcove in the dungeons just a few meters from the Potions classroom. Her lip is trembling and she knows that she looks every part the blubbering little girl that everyone surely thinks she is. She is also feeling very sorry for herself, a sentiment that she normally despises when she sees it in other people. She doesn't like hypocrites.

She drags her sleeve across her sodden face in annoyance. Even before the door shut behind her, she knew that she would return because since when did Hermione Granger run away from her battles? She had burst out the door and ran, then stumbled, then shuffled her feet. She didn't get very far before her sensibility caught up with her. She hates herself for it.

And so here she sits, postponing the inevitable.

"Bugger. Bollocks. Shit."

She tries her best to mop her face with her sleeves, pressing her fists into her eyes in an effort to subdue the swelling and the redness and the hot tears. She does not understand why she let his insults affect her as they did, when he'd dished out far, far worse in the past.

The stupid little voice in her head is back, now that the sniffling and the hiccupping and the _pound-pound-pounding _have subsided.

You're weak, it is saying. You're weak, and you're snivelling like an idiot, and you're _so bloody weak_, and you. Let. Him. Win.

She fidgets.

And _huffs_.

And wrenches a hank of bushy hair behind her ear.

She is sure she looks a fright, but she left her wand along with all her other things in the classroom.

Brightest witch of her age? She snorts.

She finally stands, dragging her protesting feet until she is in front of the Potions classroom door. She hears his voice diffusing through it. It is amplified by the muggy walls. It surrounds her in the cramped hallway. There was always this quality to his voice that is strangely comforting, but only when it is separated from his sneers and his venom and all that dense indecent black wrapped around him like armor.

She closes her eyes and leans her forehead on scratchy wood. She feels the faint warmth exuded by the torches above the door, and their balmy light flickers in mesmerizing bouquets of russet and amber through the tears that cling to her lashes.

With his voice tinting the air around her and the pretty lights winking like holding a magnifying glass to your eye and bringing it close, then moving it farther, then bringing it close again, it is almost like a dream. A dream in which Hermione Granger wasn't really Hermione Granger, because the real Hermione Granger isn't this weak.

One second, and she will open the door. She will walk in, and sit down, and brew her potion. Because she isn't weak.

One second.

One second more.

"Bollocks. Shit shit shitty buggering bollocks."

"Fuck," she adds in a tentative whisper.

One last second more, she promises herself.

She places her hand on the doorknob and—

"Miss Granger. If you have quite finished with your histrionics—" the door flies open and trembles on its hinges as it hits the wall—"get _in_, or leave my class for good."

She barely keeps herself from stumbling forward. Harry is looking at her like she is bound to spontaneously combust at any moment. Ron is red in the face, like he always gets whenever he yells, and he switches back and forth between dirty looks at Professor Snape and encouraging nods at her. Malfoy and his group are exchanging fatuous grins, Parkinson sniggering into her hand.

And there in front of the class is Professor Snape looking at her in that way that feels like a challenge like he is so sure that she can't handle it.

For two agonizing seconds, two eternal seconds, her mind is blank. But then, the two seconds come to pass, after all.

She is sure she looks a fright. And she is sure she will get a zero for the day. But.

_But._

"Quite finished, sir."

Because she isn't weak. And she may be a hypocrite, and she may snivel like an idiot, but she isn't weak. And the thought straightens her spine and lifts her chin. And the voice in her head is her own voice again.

* * *

Later she will think that she always has the most intense, most memorable, most self-conscious reactions to _him_. She could be angry, or violently upset, or quietly defensive, but whatever it is she is reacting with, it is always strongest when it involves him.

And perhaps it is because he is an unknown variable to her, and she, with her inborn unshakeable curiosity, overcompensates for not knowing by reacting too much. In any case, she can't really help it.

It is a revelation of sorts, and it strikes her as somewhat important, though she doesn't exactly know what to do with it.

* * *

"_He _looks happy." Ginny nods her chin in the direction of a bellowing Harry. "Just look at him go."

Hermione places a finger on the end of the sentence she just finished reading and looks up.

"I know. It's nice."

By now, Harry is on his feet, gesticulating wildly at the chessboard between him and Ron. Several first or second years edge away cautiously. Ron, on the other hand, has an uncharacteristically placid smile on his face. He is getting far too accustomed to demolishing his opponents in wizard chess.

"—you bloody well knew that was an illegal move—"

"Language, Potter!"

"—and you still, oh, er, sorry Hermione, and you still fucking did it! I thought we agreed—"

"It wasn't illegal, you prat," Ron cuts in with utmost calm. "Boris Denisov demonstrated—"

"Like I give a rat's arse what Boris _bloody _Deniso—"

"—master in wizard chess, and you're just sore that you—"

"—smug grin off your face _right now _or I swear on Merlin's grotty testi—"

Hermione burrows deeper into the overstuffed couch, shoving her feet under Ginny's outstretched knees to keep them warm. Ginny obligingly stretches her blanket out to cover Hermione's calves.

"He _does _seem rather... Loose, doesn't he?" Hermione smiles. Ginny responds with a giggle.

Harry is getting redder and redder, Ron even more self-satisfied with each passing second. Harry's swearing has improved vastly in sheer inventiveness, a skill he undoubtedly picked up from Fred and George. But she doesn't mind, not at all.

Because there is a rage building up inside him and it scares her. And sometimes he is silent and pensive, like a cliff frozen in the moment of rupture, and she knows that he is thinking of the lives that he is responsible for and the greatness that was thrust on his scrawny shoulders and how there is no way out from under or from above. Other times, the rage makes itself known and he spews out his helpless fury.

But at other times still, less often, he is not Harry-Potter-the-boy-who-lived, but Harry, _dear _Harry, with his hair too long at the ears and his robes too short at the wrists. And for now, it is enough.

She shakes her head and puts her nose back in her book.

* * *

She is asleep.

And then, she isn't.

Her mind reels for a moment, not ready for the sudden jolt into consciousness. Then, slowly, everything melts back into place, and shadows solidify in front of her eyes. There is her nightstand. There is her lamp. There is the rising and falling lump that is Crookshanks snoring by her feet.

She is breathing hard without knowing why and the covers are knotted inextricably around her legs.  
There was a dream. The kind that feels more real than real ever does. But those are also the kind that slip out of your grasp like sand through your fingers.

She sits up, trying to remember. Wisps of colors, phantom sensations flit through her mind.

There was warmth, she thinks. Or was it frigid cold? Whatever it was, it was unbearable. There was the barest tinge of hysteria, the aftertaste of asphyxiation in her throat. There was... A hand? Yes, there was a hand. Clamped around the back of her neck. A left hand, attached to a left arm, an arm whose muscles writhed under desecrated, ink-stained skin.

She rubs her eyes. She hates the stale taste of sleep in her mouth.

And then—

She leaps out of bed, and clatters her way to her book bag. It takes her a full minute to locate it in the dark. She freezes mid-grab as Parvati shifts and mutters, but then decides she doesn't care if she wakes up everyone in the room. She drops to her knees and shoves her arm in her bag and rifles through. Her fingers scrabble at her ink pot, her tin of mints, her spare hair band before closing on the loose bit of parchment she is looking for. She fishes a quill out from between the pages of her Transfiguration textbook, and crawls over to a scant patch of moonlight on the floor.

_Protean Charm_, she writes in bold, blocky script.

She sits back on her knees. It's N.E.W.T. level magic, but she is Hermione Granger, which means she knows the theory. All she has to do is memorize a series of wand movements, master the proper articulation, and she's all set.

Yes. Yes, it's perfect!

There may be some research to be done. She has to figure out how to modify the charm to respond in kind to a change in one designated object. There may be _hours_of research to be done. She feels the familiar anticipation in her fingers, eager to crack open something with pages and pages of ponderous, barely-discernible script.

But what object should she cast the spell on? It has to be something commonplace enough that it won't be found strange if discovered in the possession of D.A. members, yet distinctive enough that it won't be misplaced. Perhaps a scrap of colored parchment, or a coin. A coin would be far more subtle than charmed notes.

She scribbles the word coin (_Galleon?_) under Protean Charm, feeling inordinately pleased with herself.

She rubs at the second knuckle of her little finger, at a spot where she never fails to find a smudge of ink after handling a quill.

_Desecrated, ink-stained skin._

The ink on her fingers rubs off. It smears and spreads and it gets all over her clothes, but it always rubs off. But there are some kinds of ink that seep in, and steal through, and lacquer your bones with an immutable pollution. Some kinds that clog up empty spaces and stay there forever like a prison sentence, and are as indelible as the stench of death.

* * *

When Ron's hand brushes against hers on patrol, she commits to memory the texture of his cool skin. His hand is large, and unwieldy, and lovely.

"Ron, _you'll _never change, will you?"

"What is it I did this time?" he asks, affronted. "I finished that essay for Flitwick the other day!"

"Never mind, Ron." She smiles. He smiles back, and she knows that he isn't nearly as thick as he lets on.

They take the short way this time, treading around fringes of shadow. And she pretends that the heat in her face is brought on by the strain of walking, and not by his hand brushing against hers again.

And again.

And again.

* * *

"—can't believe you put this off for _Quidditch practice_—"

"—stick out of your bum, honestly. And the match is only a week away! A _week_! And you expect me to—"

"_What did you just say to me?_You know what? Fine. Go and fly around on your—your little _broomsticks _of death and toss your stupid little quiffles—"

"Quaffles. It's pronounced quah-ffle. With a bloody _ah_."

"—don't care! Alright? I don't! Do whatever you like, and you can _die_ on your flying _stick_ alone in the _rain _for all I care, just don't come snivelling back to—"

"—don't understand a thing about—snivel? I don't _sniv_—"

"—my help. Because I won't help you this time. And when you wake up in the morning and realize that the O.W.L.s are two days away, let's see how much Quidditch practice is going to help you."

"Hermione."

She sniffs.

"Hermione."

"_What?_"

"It's October. Did you know that? October. The O.W.L.s aren't 'till June."

"Harry. I don't think you realize how quickly eight months can go by."

She looks around for support.

"Ron. Ronald! I know you can hear me! Aren't you going to say something?"

"What? Oh... Er, well, Angelina _did _make us swear not to miss practice. You know what she's like, she's almost as bad as you someti—"

She rounds on him.

"Oh, come on, Hermione. Harry's right, it's the first match of the season, and even if you don't like Quidditch, doesn't mean it shouldn't be a priority for us. And—don't look at me like that—eight months don't go by _that _quickly. So... Er, yeah."

"_Ugh!_ Fine. _Fine_."

She snatches her completed essay from Ron's hand, and marches up to her room.

"Oi! I needed that!"

* * *

She smiles at the lump of orange and green wool she has been working on for the past forty-five minutes. She thinks her skill in knitting has improved wonderfully over the past month.

"Ginny, can you tell what this is?"

Ginny looks up from her homework.

"Erm... Is that a hat? Either that, or a sock. It's definitely something that goes on a body part."

"Thanks!" she replies brightly. Definitely improved. _Something that goes on a body part_ is exactly what she is going for, and not _Some poor bloke's badly transfigured kidney_, as Ron had put it.

* * *

Ten inches and three quarters. Vine and a core of dragon heartstring. Smooth. Pliant. Warm. It is a beautiful hue of brown, richer than that of her mousy hair, more vibrant than the mud of her eyes.

She thinks that it is sleeker than Harry's. Far more supple than Ron's. And maybe more graceful than Ginny's. But she remembers how powerfully their wands have responded to them, how sparks seethed from their tips when their wielders were particularly angry or upset. This has never happened with hers.

She used to wonder if it was because of her blood, the unrefined alloy of magic and Muggle that flows through her veins.

There is Parvati and her formidable Reductor curse. Fred and George, with their effortless charms. And Professor Snape, with his constitutional instinct for the art of potion-making.

She watches him through the fumes of her cauldron. His back is to her and he moves around the room to inspect their potions. Hands behind his back, posture erect. He stopped by her table earlier and moved on without a word, without looking at her. She knows her potion is perfect. It always is. She knows she is good at this sort of thing, at reading instructions and performing them admirably. At organizing, and controlling, and bridling. She knows that she has top marks in all her classes, and that she can absorb facts and imprint them into the very tissues of her brain. Because she is Hermione Granger, and she is put together, and pragmatic, and sensible.

Because she is Harry Potter's... _Clever friend._

She can almost feel the weight of his sneer.

But these are things that she doesn't like to think about, because she likes to tell herself that she isn't weak. And he can call her whatever he wants to, but she isn't weak.

* * *

"Please, Hermione."

"Sweet, gentle Hermione."

She purses her lips.

"Come _on_, McGonagall's gonna _murder_ me. _Me_, Hermione. Your oldest, dearest, manliest friend."

She raises an eyebrow.

"Apart from Harry, of course."

She turns the other way. Ron is silent for a while. She hears him rummage through his pockets, cursing as various objects drop to the floor. A fat, floridly purple package is thrust into her lap.

"It's the last of my stock. There's a couple of that toffee spice kind that you like so much. Delicious, shiny, chocolatey, er... chocolate full of sticky toffee that dribbles down your chin and—"

"Oh, give it here, you big git."

Her lips twitch.

He thanks her profusely as she revises his Transfigurations essay. October expires in an ecstasy of dappled gold on the other side of the castle walls, and it is beautiful. It is beautiful. Life is beautiful.

* * *

Harry, Fred, and George are banned from Quidditch. And the entirety of Gryffindor is in a funereal mood. And Umbridge has managed to ruin yet another thing that makes Hogwarts home. But the first snowfall of the season is upon them, a shower of pale grey against pale black, and Hagrid's lights are spilling out into the night for the first time in months, and, really, this is all she ever needed from the world.

* * *

Her mouth is too dry. Her tongue is too thick. The room is too warm. Everything is wrong and nothing can be done to make it right.

"Miss Granger, please, sit down. Professor Snape, if you would..."

A hand closes around her elbow and guides her until the back of her knees hits something soft. She sinks down automatically.

_Oh, Mr. Weasley._

Mr. Weasley, who always asked so kindly about her parents. Who always welcomed her into their already packed home. Who grinned at her exuberantly, clasping his hands together, when she explained to him why Muggles need to floss regularly. Who, with all his pecuniary difficulties, is one of the most honorable people she has ever known. Who helped her see that maybe Purebloods, just like Mudbloods, can be much more than they seem.

And—oh, but Mrs. Weasley, and Ron and Ginny! Seven. There were seven of them. Seven children deprived of a father.

And Harry. Harry will do what he does best, and blame himself. And this scares her, because this might be the tipping point, the push that he needs before everything falls apart in their faces.

Just when everything seemed so close to _normal_, for a change.

"Miss Granger." Dimly, she registers that she must respond. It is the Headmaster, after all. Images of red, red, _red_. Red in thinning patches on a pale scalp, red in glistening swathes on a stone wall.

"Miss Granger," Professor Dumbledore says, more firmly this time.

She wills her eyes to focus themselves on his face, not wanting to seem impolite.

"Yes, Professor Dumbledore."

"Would you like some tea?"

Tea. Would she like some tea? Because a cup of sodding _tea_ can fix everything, and sop up the red, and bring people back to life. Would she like some bloody _tea_? Yes, tea would be lovely, thanks. Perhaps a biscuit or two, if you have them.

"No, thank you."

He settles back into his seat, steepling his fingers under his chin.

"Arthur Weasley survived. He has been taken to St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries."

"Oh."

_Oh._

She feels as though she has just stepped off an aeroplane, and the pressure bubbles swelling against her ears finally pop, and all sound rushes through in a cacophonous blur.

_Oh._

She rubs her eyes and is surprised to find them wet. She forces the dry knot in her throat back down into her gut or whatever you call that place inside of you where you keep dangerous things like fear and doubt and pretense.

"W-will Mr. Weasley be alright?"

"He is as fine as can be expected, considering the gravity of his injury. His condition has stabilized, and I believe we are to expect full recovery in a few weeks. The Weasley children and Mr. Potter have already seen him yesterday, and are staying at the Black residence for the time being."

"But please, sir. Could... could you tell me what happened?"

Professor Snape makes an impatient noise somewhere to her left. She pushes his presence to the back of her mind. Professor Dumbledore levels her with a calculating look, and she knows he is deliberating what can be told and what should be heard.

"Arthur Weasley has been injured in the course of his duties for the Order of the Phoenix. Fortunately, we learned of this immediately after its occurrence, and thus were able to prevent any... lasting effects."

Lasting effects. What a courteous way to put it.

"It was Harry, wasn't it? He's the reason you found out about the attack."

"Have you been in contact with Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley?" he asks.

"Oh, no. It... it was Seamus and Dean. They told me about what happened in their room the other night, that Harry was having about a nightmare, and he kept yelling something about a giant snake. They didn't tell anyone else though, they wouldn't," she adds hastily, fearful that she just landed her housemates in trouble.

"No, no, Mr. Finnegan and Mr. Thomas are perfectly trustworthy young men." His voice is mild and paternal once again. "Now, I understand you had plans to take the Hogwarts Express ba—"

"Is this why you've been avoiding Harry, sir?" She realizes with horror that she just interrupted the Headmaster, but the question hurtles out from between her lips with an urgency that she cannot tame. From the corner of her eye, she spies Professor Snape's form straighten to its full height.

"Avoiding Harry, Miss Granger?" For the first time in her life, she quails apprehensively under the gaze of her Headmaster.

"Well, Harry's been having these dreams. For a while now. And we, Ron and I, we always tell him to go to you about it. And I know he used to, in fourth year, when the dreams started. And I know that he and... and V-Vol—" she stutters.

A series of syllables, an opening and closing of lips, she reminds herself. But she remembers a night when a hand was clamped around the back of her neck, and a wand dug a hole into her temple. And she sees a shifting of black from the corner of her eye. She clears her throat.

"I know that Harry and You-Know-Who have some sort of... connection through his scar, so that's why he has those dreams. But he doesn't go to you, not anymore, and whenever we speak about you, I can tell he's bitter about something..."

"And what reason could I possibly have for avoiding him?"

"Perhaps... perhaps you thought that this connection they have is a lot stronger than it was. That maybe, if Harry can feel what _he's_ feeling, and, when he saw the attack on Mr. Weasley, maybe it works the other way too, and _he_ can get into Harry's head. Maybe You-Know-Who doesn't know this yet, but he will, eventually. And, well, you and Harry have always been close, so maybe _he _can use that to his advantage. To hurt Harry. And you."

Her reasoning makes more sense in her own head. Professor Dumbledore smiles at her. It is wry, and tired, and entirely too different from the twinkling, indulgent smile that she is used to. She hates those indulgent smiles, doesn't she? So why, why, _why_, then, is she wishing for them now? Anything would be better than the way he is looking at her now, like she should _know _things.

"You are a very clever young lady, Hermione Granger." She looks down, heat suffusing her cheeks. She isn't looking for compliments. "Certainly, you understand the wisdom of keeping this exchange to yourself, for the time being?"

Harry surely blames himself for the attack. If he finds out that You-Know-Who can get into his head, he will think that he is putting the rest of them in danger just by being around them. He will perhaps try to leave, and he will only put himself at risk. She knows this because she would think the same thing, do the same thing. And the rage will build inside him, until it devours everything he used to be.

Yes, she understands. Not because she is clever, but because she is Harry's best friend.

She nods quietly.

"One more thing, sir."

Professor Dumbledore raises his eyebrows inquiringly.

"Is Harry... I mean, he _is_still... himself, isn't he? It wasn't him who attacked Mr. Weasley. Because that's just... impossible." The guilt is hot in her stomach. She doesn't doubt Harry, she can never doubt Harry, but it has to be asked.

"Do you mean to ask if Harry has ever been under the direct influence of Lord Voldemort's mind?"

"No—I... I mean, yes, Professor."

"No, my dear. Harry Potter is still very much Harry Potter."

"But then, doesn't he have a right to know, eventually? To defend himself, if his mind is so susceptible to such—to such evil?"

To her left, Professor Snape clears his throat. The Headmaster gives her an apologetic smile.

"Ah, I'm afraid we have taken far too much of Professor Snape's time. As I was saying earlier, I am aware you had been planning to take the Hogwarts Express back to see your parents. You are welcome, however, to join the Weasleys and Mr. Potter at headquarters. I'm sure Sirius will be glad of your presence. Professor Snape is heading there right now on Order business, and he will gladly escort you if you choose to go."

She glances at him, his profile sharp in the bleak light of dawn.

"Oh, erm, do I have to leave now? I haven't packed..."

"Not to worry! Your trunk will be sent along shortly. It will be best for you to leave as soon as possible, as Dolores Umbridge has been made aware of students leaving the castle without her permission. She is watching the Floo Network, and the Ministry is watching for unauthorized Portkeys. You and Professor Snape can head to Hogsmeade to take the Knight Bus. I must confess, I _am_ rather envious. I have always found the Knight Bus a most ingeniously convenient mode of transportation. Imagine, all one has to do is to stick out his wand arm..."

* * *

Winter washes him out, she thinks. Or maybe she just isn't accustomed to seeing him in sunlight. He is walking ahead of her, four, maybe five steps ahead, and she struggles to keep up with his pace. He hasn't said a word to her for the entire trip in the carriage from Hogwarts, except to bark at her to _Move your legs, Miss Granger! _when she took too long getting on. They reach the gates, and as soon as she steps past the winged boars, she can swear that the temperature drops ten degrees. She pulls her scarf up higher on her face. It is a frothy pink and pale blue concoction sent by her mother, and it smells of chestnuts.

He stalks off ahead of her, and with a twitch of his wrist his wand drops from his sleeve into his palm. He flings out his arm as if to cast a spell and—

BANG.

She leaps back in alarm, her heart thudding somewhere in the vicinity of her eardrums. The unabashedly purple bus materializes out of thin air, and the scent of petrol tints the cold wind around her. She furrows her brows, knowing that magical buses most certainly do not run on petrol.

Professor Snape is entirely unruffled. She takes a moment to collect herself before trudging up to stand next to him. She wonders if she should let him get on first, or if he is waiting for her to board. Would it be rude to just get on ahead of him? Or would he find it rude if she were to assume that he wasn't waiting for her to get on first because he doesn't really seem the type to ascribe to things as banal as manners?

Her dilemma is put on hold as a gangly boy not much older than she launches himself from the steps to stand in front of them. When he speaks, it is with a rehearsed enthusiasm that manifests itself in an ungainly swinging of too-long limbs.

"Welcome to the Knight Bus, I'm your cond—"

"That will be all, boy." Professor Snape sneers at him.

There is a moment of painful silence. The boy, deprived of the chance to complete the speech he probably recited to every single member of Wizarding Britain, looks utterly distraught.

One second.

Four.

Seven.

Professor Snape turns to look down his nose at her.

"It's a bus, Miss Granger. You get in and sit down, and it takes you to various locations."

Her eyes narrow at him from the scant bit of her face that is exposed to the cold. She is more incensed by his rudeness to the young conductor than by his sarcastic quip.

"I _know _what a bu—"

"Yes, yes, forgive me. I have quite forgotten the breadth of your knowledge. Are you getting in, then? I suppose it will take another five minutes for the correct message to get to the muscles of your legs from your brain."

"Not at all, Professor," she pushes out through gritted teeth.

So.

He _was_ waiting for her to board. But he needn't be so... _mean _all the time.

She pulls down her scarf and gives the poor conductor a consoling smile as she walks past him, but she is sure that the combination of biting cold and indignation has made her smile seem more like a threatening leer.

She treads up the steps gingerly, keeping a firm hold on the handlebar. Stairs, along with the wet snow, can prove fatal to one as graceless as she. And she has no intention of giving her professor further ammunition. She hurries over to the back of the deserted bus, taking a seat in one of the assortment of mismatched chairs by the window. The smell of petrol is stronger here, but it is compensated for by the muggy warmth of an air-conditioning charm. She is certain that Professor Snape will remain close to the front, the sooner to get off.

She watches him as he exchanges a few words with the wizened driver and everything is strange. With the cotton-candy snow and the scent of petrol and her Potions professor's nose tipped in shiny red, everything is strange. Nothing earth-shattering or anything, just odd in a gently disconcerting kind of way. Like when you go to bed in your thick socks and somehow while you're sleeping one of them disappears, and you wonder, half-dreaming, why one foot is colder than the other. It is something a little bit like that.

It is strange to see Professor Snape standing there, with the purple-clad, pimply conductor looking thoroughly dejected behind him, with sunlight streaming in through grime-encrusted windows, with bits of snow in his hair and coat.

And she thinks: So _this _is what Professor Snape looks like in the sun. Grumpy and disheveled. Squinting. Pink-cheeked.

It is strange when he catches her eye, and exhales sharply, and stalks over to join her in the back of the bus. He doesn't sit down, opting to stand and keep a stiff grip on one of the hand straps hanging from a rail on the ceiling. He stands just behind her chair, his right boot just within her view.

And when the bus jolts forward with a bang and her chair falls over backward and she flings her limbs out and squeals in panic, it is even stranger that her chair stops mid-fall. And that its momentum is reversed, and it falls forward with a thud. And that, as she slumps backward to catch her breath, she feels sharp knuckles press into her back. Sharp, leather-encased knuckles wrapped around the back of her chair. And the strangest part is that he doesn't remove his hand for the rest of the trip. Doesn't even say a word. Not even if her chair is hurled backward with each successive bang. Not even if the heat of his hand seeps through the supple leather of his glove, through her three layers of wool, and sinks into the flesh of her back.

* * *

It's the smell that gets to most people. The harsh antiseptic burn that leaves your nasal cavity and your throat and your lungs feeling a little cleaner than they have ever been before. A sanitary, citrus-y odor that is there to mask the tang of blood, sweat, and other bodily fluids. But the smell of a hospital doesn't bother her.

For other people, it's the lights. Like the smell, it burns in your face. It is merciless white, and it's impossible to hide anything in its glare. But the lights don't really make her uncomfortable, either.

What bothers her about hospitals is the pace of everything. Everyone who works in a hospital is brutally efficient. She always thought that there is a certain inhumanity in that, in the rapid cycling of injuries, and diseases, and lives. In the shuttering _out_ and the moving _on_.

St. Mungo's is no different from Muggle hospitals in that respect. The smell is more pleasant, the lights more mellow, but the same shrewd, whip-smart proficiency is evident in the brisk walk of the Healers and the crisp catalogue of injuries on the sign behind the Welcome Witch.

Mr. Weasley is deathly pale, but cheerful. He had shaken her hand profusely earlier. She had given him a present of her Mum and Dad's outdated orthodontic tools and they were enough to make him happy and she wishes they could be enough for her too, but they aren't.

A week earlier, she was worried about her Arithmancy homework, and the upcoming O.W.L.s, and knitting for more house-elves, and the D.A. And here is Mr. Weasley, recovering from a near-fatal snake bite, chuffed to bits because she had given him a palatal expander and a spare retainer.

She recalls Neville's mum, tortured into a grotesque similitude of life by Bellatrix Lestrange. Neville had been embarrassed when they accidentally found him and his grandmother visiting Frank and Alice Longbottom. She recalls the defiance in his usually mild-mannered face, as if to dare them to _pity him, go on, pity poor Neville with the crazy parents._

She laughs distractedly at a joke Tonks cracks. Apparently, it was a good one. Ginny is wheezing next to her, and Fred is slapping his knee. Even Harry breaks into a slow grin. No one notices when her laughter sputters and dies.

Homework.

And O.W.L.s.

And knitting.

And her little pet project, the D.A.

It's Christmas, and the Dai Llewellyn Ward is bedecked in holly and ivy, but the guilt builds and builds until it clogs her throat and pushes behind her eyes.

* * *

The next time she sees him, it will have been eighteen days later.

His lips will be pressed tight, his knuckles white around his wand, his throat taut. Sirius will be breathing hard on the opposite side of the kitchen. Harry will be standing between the two of them, consternation in his face.

"Six o'clock Monday evening, Potter,*" Professor Snape will say sleekly.

When he leaves, the fabric of his coat will brush against her arm. It will be rough, and woolly, and so very black, and it will smell like smoke in winter. Like wet leaves burning in a low fire. Like rain falling on frozen earth, with dead bare branches slicing into a pale moon. When he leaves he will take the smell with him, and she will look down and shove her hands in her pockets.

* * *

A/N:

*Taken directly from canon.

So someone told me that British hospitals are nothing like how I described them here, so sorry! I can't change it though, because it really wouldn't work for my story if the hospital staff were nice and friendly and stopped to chat and the lights weren't as bright and they all found the whole experience to be generally agreeable. I needed a bit of drama in that scene so we're gonna stick with that.

Thanks for reading!

Oh, and reviews would be great, thanks!


	3. Three

"So I saw him the other day."

Ginny has this habit of beginning a story from the middle like she is resuming a conversation that was held two hours before and everyone thought was over. No one will understand what in the world Ginny is talking about until someone is brave enough to interrupt her and ask her to please clarify herself.

"Saw whom, Ginny?" Hermione asks patiently, wiping a streak of cream cheese from her chin with her sleeve. Ginny's lack of story-telling skill bothers her to no end, but she's never brought it up. Ginny can be quite the defensive little harridan when criticized. She will bring up something about Hermione, something past yet still thoroughly embarrassing. And Hermione can be just as defensive. Then there will be yelling, turning up noses, slamming doors... In the end, it really isn't worth the argument.

"Snape," Ginny shrugs.

This is another problem; Ginny has to be prompted to continue her story. Normally, Hermione would just leave it at that. She sets her toast back down on the plate carefully balanced in her lap.

"_Professor _Snape. So, you saw him...?"

"Yeah, he was in here, in the library. It was rather strange. Mum told me to go turn off the lights and gather the empty glasses up here, you know, just trying to get rid of me while the _grown-ups _were talking." Ginny says this with such concentrated malice that she doesn't realize the piece of toast crumbling into bits in her clenched fist.

"Ginny, your toast."

"Oh, yeah, thanks."

"So... What happened?" Hermione tries not to sound too eager.

"Nothing. He was just sitting in an armchair—the one you're sitting in right now, in fact—just staring at the wall. I mean, that's the strangest part. I thought he would yell at me to get my arse out of here and stop being such a Weasley, or take house points, but he didn't even notice me until I was already in the room."

"Oh." Hermione tries very hard not to imagine her professor's bum touching the same spot _her_ bum is now nestled snugly in. It's just… _Weird_.

"It was—I suppose you had to be there to understand what I'm saying. Like, you know how a bloke who's trying to chat you up always talks in a lower voice than normal, trying to look all sophisticated and whatever, and you walk in on him and his lads talking about tits and such and getting all excited, and their voices crack like little twelve-year-olds'? And then you realize, all those times he was dropping his crap in front of you, he was just trying to get you to bend over, so you look back and try to count the times you've done that unknowingly?"

"Er..." No. Hermione doesn't know.

Ginny tries a different route.

"Or how you realize for the first time in your life that your parents are fully capable of lying, and that they've probably done it loads of times? It sort of felt like that with Snape. He was always this character, this greasy old git that would be better off dead—"

"_Ginny!_"

"—no, no, sorry, I didn't mean that, but, well you know what I meant."

Ginny falls silent for a moment, pushing her tongue against the inside of her cheek.

"It was like... like, _bam_! You know? Like, _pow_! There it is, all of a sudden. We're in a war, and there are these people on one side and those people on the other, and… and we're all just _people_, you know? I mean, Snape's a person too. He eats food like we do and he needs to go to the loo sometimes, and other times he can get lost in thought just like any one of us. But he's supposed to be a bad guy, but he's also a _person_, and I guess what I'm trying to say is that you never really know. "

Suddenly the atmosphere is quite uncomfortable and Hermione looks down at her book, pretending to be only partly listening. Ginny continues talking.

"It was this... revelation. An epiphany, if you will. He was just sitting there, staring. I don't know what made me think of it, actually. Maybe it's because Mum and Dad have always pushed those sorts of things aside and acted like nothing out of the ordinary's going on anywhere in the world. I think I always knew, and I was just waiting for some proof of it."

Ginny takes a bite of her toast, getting blackberry clot all over her teeth. Hermione feels as if they have touched on something foreign, and for a moment they are mired in a thoughtful silence. Ginny shrugs and smiles dismissively, backtracking.

"I was probably reading too much into it, it all lasted just one second. If it were anyone else, it wouldn't have struck me that way. He _did_ tell me to get out, eventually. Then he probably remembered that he had to leave, so he just up and left. It was just strange."

* * *

She didn't get to catch up with her parents, after all. She wrote them, promising (_I swear, Mum!_) to catch the Knight Bus so she could spend at least part of the holidays with them. They cancelled the skiing trip, but they could still spend a weekend together. But the holidays come and go and before she knows it, she is on the Hogwarts Express once again, nose pressed up to the window, trying to squeeze in her final goodbyes to the Weasleys as the train rounds the bend. It was surprisingly cheerful in Grimmauld Place, and she finds herself a little sorry to leave it. She bites her lip, guilty at the thought that she enjoyed Christmas without her mum and dad.

* * *

It isn't something she likes to talk about. Not because it was particularly tragic or life-changing or anything. More like it was part of a different time, a different world, and it seems so trivial all these years later. It was all harmless anyway. A whispered comment here and there, just loud enough for her to hear, just low enough for her to convince herself that she heard them wrong. It was usually about her hair or her teeth. The more creative ones would go for the way her rucksack bulged because of all the library books she stuffed in them, or for her foreign, prissy name that had too many syllables for the average seven-year-old. Sometimes they would all join up in a prank, like that one week where every single child in Year Five and a few in Year Six pretended not to hear a word she said and she thought she'd gone mental.

She wasn't their only target, and it wasn't like it scarred her or anything. Her parents were very supportive of her... precociousness, and made sure to let her know that reading textbooks for fun isn't something to be ashamed of. She knew how to deal with most of it. She likes to think that she had been the bigger person, walking away and ignoring their sniggering and quiet taunting.  
Oh, she cried a _few_ times, she supposes. Maybe three, perhaps four times, when some of the older ones got bored and vicious. But mostly she was just left alone. There were intervals, _months_, even, of relative peace.

Harry looks up and scowls as Malfoy says something clearly meant to carry over to the Gryffindor side of things, and his cronies put on a show of laughing hysterically. Ron mutters darkly and makes stabbing motions with his fork.

She pitied her childhood tormentors, those back in primary school, with all of her pre-adolescent heart. She knew that laughing at someone for liking books and knowledge, for answering all of the teacher's questions was just _silly_, because they could only go so far before realizing that they were behind her in everything.

So when Malfoy first called her a Mudblood, she was _hurt_, but she got over it. She was always sort of introverted, and her scholarly pursuits kept her apart from the usual crowd. Some might even call her snotty and aloof. So what was another distinction, another label? And when Parkinson laughed at her teeth, or the animal that made a nest on top of her head, it wasn't something she'd never heard before.

But now…. Now she feels as if they have stepped into this margin. This dangerous grey area where there are no clearly defined rules, and they don't really know what they're doing, or _why _they're doing it, but they do it all the same.

They still have their parts to play. There's Harry in the lead and Malfoy the bully and Ron the aggressive one and Hermione the girl who tries to be the mature and Crabbe and Goyle the cronies.

But sometimes, these parts just aren't enough anymore, and things are different.

Sometimes they say things that they mean with every fiber of their being, and she and Harry and Ron retort with words that are too barbed to be meant in jest. Sometimes, when a group of Slytherin girls cringe and shudder so very sincerely as she walks past and she feels something cold settle in her chest.

These are the times when she can't feel that childish pity, and the line between them, between Malfoy and Harry, between the Slytherins and the rest of the school, becomes a little clearer.

When it started, she used to think that they _had_ to say those things, that they _had _to pick up on the trail of bigotry and prejudice that their parents have left behind. But it isn't enough anymore, not now. They can't make those excuses because primary school has long gone. And they may still be children, but fifteen or sixteen isn't too young to be able to discern right from wrong.

So, this time, when Malfoy catches her eye and mouths the words _filthy fucking Mudblood_ at her from across the room, when he slashes his thumb heinously across his throat and grins at her, she remembers. She burns the image into her brain, because the time will come when the line will be blacker and the hate will be suffocating, and she needs to know whose faces she will see across the void.

* * *

"How did it go?"* she whispers, glancing shiftily around and listening for the telltale squeak of Madam Pince's shoes against the floor. They have chosen a particularly secluded corner in the back of the stacks, but no corner can be completely secure from the vigilant librarian.

Harry looks dreadful. His skin has adopted a clammy pallor. His scar is stark and ugly on his forehead. His eyes are too wide, too bright.

"Harry?" He doesn't respond. She exchanges a worried glance with Ron.

"Are you alright, Harry?"* she asks, her voice a little louder this time. She hears a vehemently pinched _Shush!_from behind the bookshelves.

"Yeah... fine... I dunno,"* he mutters impatiently. He cringes and tilts his head back, placing a palm on his forehead. He remains like this for a few moments. Hermione edges her seat a little closer.

He straightens in an abrupt folding in of slim limbs and sharp joints and places his elbows on his knees. This is how he moves, she thinks. All fleet, and nimble, and hard-edged. When he opens his mouth to speak, it is with a slow hesitation. Almost like he is puzzling something out for himself, like the sound of the words leaving his mouth is a curiously novel concept.

"Listen... I've just realized something..."*

"Is it to do with your connection to Voldemort?" she blurts out. Ron gives her a dirty look.

"Will you let him talk?"

"Sorry, sorry. Carry on, Harry."

"You know those dreams I've been telling you about? With the windowless corridor and the locked door? The one I've been having for months?"

"Yeah, go on."

"Yeah. Well, when I was in Occlumency with Snape—"

"_Professor _Snape."

"Hermione!"

"Oh, shut up, Ronald."

Harry sighs.

"Look, are you two done? Because I'm knackered. I'm gonna head off to bed if you don't want to hear it."

She gives him a conciliatory smile.

"Harry, I won't say another word, I promise."

He gives her that look. The one that she always gets from him when she is being disagreeable and he knows she knows it. But he continues talking anyway.

"Right, well. Snape did Legilimency on me so I could practice Occlumency. It's sort of like... like he was reading my mind. He said that it wasn't that, exactly, that it's more subtle than just opening someone's head up and reading your thoughts like words in a book, but that's what it felt like. Like turning pages. And as he was doing it, I saw... memories. My memories..." He trails off. The moonlight is pure and hard. A cold glint of scalpel silver reflected in lucid green.

"Your memories, Harry?" Ron prompts him gently.

"Er, yeah. There was stuff from before, from before Hogwarts. Unimportant stuff. Then I saw the memory of my hearing at the Ministry. Your dad and I were running because they changed the time and place. It was supposed to be held... _somewhere_, but they moved it to Courtroom Ten, down by the Department of Mysteries. And I realized when I saw it, the corridor I've been dreaming about looks exactly like the one leading to the Department of Mysteries. An-and your dad, when he was attacked. When... when I dreamt of his attack..."

Harry looks down into his hands. She places a hand on his wrist.

"Was Mr. Weasley in that corridor, Harry?" she asks him. He nods.

"So... so, are you saying..."* Ron whispers, then stills as Madam Pince prowls past them, looking each of them in the eye with squinting accusation, "that the weapon—the thing You-Know-Who's after—is in the Ministry of Magic?"*

Things click into place in her head. Is that what they meant whenever they said someone was on duty? That they guard the door to the Ministry of Magic in shifts? She lets out a breath of air.

"Of course,"* she says, sitting up in her chair.

"Of course what?"* Ron snaps at her. She resists the urge to roll her eyes, not wanting another row.

"Ron, think about it... Sturgis Podmore was trying to get through a door at the Ministry of Magic... It must have been that one, it's too much of a coincidence!"*

"How come Sturgis was trying to break in when he's on our side?"*

She looks at Harry. He is silent, his eyes retaining that glazed sheen, his mouth slack.

"Well, I don't know," she mumbles distractedly. "That is a bit odd..."

There is a bit of skin sticking out from the cuticle of her left thumb. She pulls on it unconsciously. Maybe Sturgis Podmore was bribed by someone? But she doesn't like to think that the members of the Order of the Phoenix are susceptible to such base behavior, so she dismisses the thought almost as soon as it forms in her head.  
Blackmail is more likely. Threats of injury, or loss of a beloved, or death. Then there are other ways still, more convenient ways of bending someone to your will. Of replacing someone's intent with magical compulsion...

She gasps. She pulled too hard, and her thumb is bleeding.

"—weird place to have a weapon."* Ron's voice penetrates her thoughts. She bunches her left hand in the fabric of her skirt.

"It's not weird at all, it makes perfect sense,"* she says. "It will be something top secret that the Ministry has been developing, I expect."*

She looks up at Harry as his glasses fall to the floor with a click. He is hunched over, the heels of his hands shoved into his eye sockets, his fingers kneading his forehead. He doesn't seem to have noticed his glasses. She frowns, then bends over to pick them up.

"Harry..." She touches his shoulder, feeling wired tension under her fingers.

"Harry," she says, more firmly. "Are you sure you're alright?"*

"Yeah... fine..."* he says, looking surprised as she hands him his glasses. He takes them with trembling fingers. "I just feel a bit... I don't like Occlumency much..."*

* * *

She adjusts her scarf around her neck, sniffing miserably. The tips of her fingers are ice, and the tip of her nose is colder still.

She and Ron have been assigned to patrol the ground floor this month, specifically the main classrooms' hallway and the Entrance Hall. She always preferred the upper floors, where the ceilings don't soar so high and her footsteps don't echo so disconsolately. But she supposes she ought to be grateful. The older prefects and the Head Boy and Girl are usually assigned to the open courtyards and the dripping dungeons.

She is almost done with this shift. The familiar tap-tap-tapping of her shoes is absent. She borrowed Ginny's thick, rubber-soled dragonhide boots for the night because her two layers of socks wouldn't fit into her regular school shoes. The boots feel strange and clunky on her feet, and they produce a low squeak every time they come into contact with the stone floor. Despite her fondness for patrol duties, she is eager to burrow under her covers.

She wonders how many hours of sleep she will get tonight. Six, maybe seven? Quite a decent amount, really. Maybe she can even squeeze in an extra hour of knitting before turning in.

Her thoughts stray to Harry. He is lately shifty like someone with a secret burning in his gut. _He _probably won't be getting more than three or four hours of sleep. She is glad she remembered to tell Ron to check on him before going to bed.

Sometimes she forgets that Harry is touchy and doesn't like to be coddled. She would see him at certain moments, and she would feel this certainty, this unequivocal _conviction_, that they are all going to crash and burn and crumple inward on themselves like so much polystyrene. At these times she would have to remind herself to _breathe, breathe slowly, Hermione_, that Harry is not as fragile as he looks.

But this happens only sometimes, when she isn't so sure about things. Sometimes, when Harry gets that coldness in his eye and that hitch in his breath, and all she can do is _coddle _him and hope he doesn't mind.

So, Occlumency is good. Occlumency is another step forward. Occlumency reminds her that there are things that can be done.

She expected something like this. She tries to remember everything she had read about it. A yellowing page in a book swims before her mind's eye, and the facts slip easily into grasp. 'Occulto,' meaning to hide, conceal. To cover. 'Mens,' meaning mind. Occlumency is a great deal more simple than its counterpart, Legilimency, as it only requires the clearing of thoughts and emotions from the conscious mind, whereas Legilimency concerns the active extraction of another's thoughts and emotions. Higher level Occlumens are capable of selectively suppressing certain memories, and are even capable of counteracting the Imperius curse to some degree.

She can see why Harry is having difficulty with learning Occlumency. He is far too volatile these days, and sometimes he is just like one big, raw, walking and talking nerve ending. But if Harry really is in danger of having his mind and his emotions exposed to Voldemort (_Vol. De. Mort._), then Occlumency is clearly the best solution. Obviously, the fact that it is Professor Snape teaching him doesn't make it any easier for anyone.

But someone like Professor Dumbledore couldn't possibly be mistaken about something as important as this. And someone like Professor Snape wouldn't let whatever animosity it is that is crackling between him and Harry get in between what needs to be done. Because this is _war_, and it is bigger than detention or resentment or hate.

There is a shifting in the night sky above and the Entrance Hall is plunged into preternatural blue-black as a cloud cloaks the moon. The torches seem to flare brighter, the shadows blacker.

She really _must _finish with her shift. She swallows cold air and quickens her footsteps.

There is a quiet rustling in the direction of the staircase to the dungeons. Trivial at first, then a blackening silhouette growing in the bluish darkness. She freezes.

What to do? What to do?

Her eyes flit across the expanse of the Entrance Hall, scanning possible hiding places. Then she remembers that she is a prefect, and she has every right to be here. She opens her mouth to admonish the late-night prowler, but her voice is just as soon tangled in a knot in the pit of her throat. She is grateful that she is standing in a corner out of the way and brimming with shadow, because... there.

There.

Standing right there. Standing tall and not at all diminished by the towering ceiling. Looking like he owns the place, like a pillar that the entire castle was built to accommodate.

And really, it's bordering on the ridiculous. Because she was just thinking about Occlumency, and _him_, and because this spectral atmosphere is just too fitting. And now there he is with the filtered moonlight from the mullioned windows waxing ghastly and grey on his face.

And then he is looking right in her direction, his eyes squinting and malevolent. It is a little strange that he didn't notice her first. She remembers how perceptive those eyes can be. She averts her own. Which is _absurd_, and _foolish_, because why on Earth would he want to perform Legilimency on her?

He staggers forward.

There is something... off. Something oddly... languorous in his movement, something torpid and supple where there should be clipped tension. And this makes her take one step back.

"Fuck." She hears him whisper when the hem of his robes gets stuck under his boot. She's never seen him trip before. The sight is strangely discomfiting, like when you are climbing a staircase and you miscount the number of steps, and you lift your knee a little too high thinking that there is one more to go, but there isn't. Like she has walked into something she is forbidden to see. He looks up again in one swift movement, throwing his arm out for balance, and she knows that he sees her.

"Come now, Miss Granger. Do you time your patrols just so we could... _bump_ into each other?"

She stops breathing for three seconds, as if to prove that, no, she really isn't here, there really isn't anyone standing in this corner like some contemptible simpleton. And _honestly_, this is ridiculous. So she steels herself and (_What are you doing, Hermione? What are you doing?_) moves out of the shadows.

"Good evening, Professor."

He dips his head slightly in acknowledgement. She can't get around the fact that _something _is wrong, because he doesn't acknowledge her. He doesn't ever acknowledge her, not unless it is for something she has done wrong.

"Let me guess. You were patrolling, and you thought you saw something. Which, of course, explains perfectly why you are hiding in the corner like a conscience-stricken toddler waiting for her punishment." He laughs humorlessly. The sound is crooked and hoarse and makes her cringe.

"I-I wasn't—" She clears her throat. "I wasn't hiding, sir. I was just finishing my patrol. I'll be off to bed now."

He gives her that look. The one that could be interpreted as either curious, or resentful. The one that lasts but one flitting second.

There is something strange in the air around them, something she cannot identify. There is a nasty thrill in her gut that she quashes into silence. She turns to walk away, to leave him to whatever it is he does in the corridors in the middle of the night.

"You know what your problem is, Granger?"

His tone is positively _genial_, for him. She knows from experience that this is not right, and the bells are ringing in her head because this is how he baits Harry, and sometimes Ron, but not her. She won't stop. She will pretend she hadn't heard him, and she will _not, absolutely not_, give him what he wants. So she walks away.

One step: She thinks she just might get away.

Two steps.

Three.

Four: She is feeling a little proud of herself.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

"You're so very _brave,_aren't you, walking away like you are."

Eight, nine.

"Acting like the better person when you know your mean, ugly Potions Professor is about to belittle you."

Ten, eleven.

"How very... _mature._"

Twelve: She refuses to listen.

Thirteen.

Fourteen.

Fifteen: She has made it farther than she thought she would.

She can feel his eyes on the back of her head. There is definitely something wrong, and she isn't sure if she cares to find out what it is.

"Are you alright, sir?" she asks, her back still turned to him. "It's been a long day for all of us. Harry's just told us about Occlum—"

"To hell with Harry _fucking _Potter!" he thunders, his voice sounding much closer than she remembers.

She turns. There he is, a mere three steps away. She hadn't gotten very far, after all. And all she can feel in that moment is her suddenly ragged breath gasping into her lungs and a profound awareness of her stupid scarf, and her dressing gown with the hole in the shoulder, and the boots that she doesn't own. He is clad in the usual black. Black so very black like a sacrament from chin to instep.

Her nostrils twitch, and suddenly she can _smell_ what's wrong. It is a smell that she sometimes encounters in the Gryffindor common room the morning after a particularly rowdy celebration. It is a smell that was stuck in her nostrils for _hours _after Ron made her try Firewhisky for the first time. It is sour, and cheap, and it is saturates the air around him, invading her senses with every move he makes. She may have been frightened before, but suddenly she isn't. Not anymore.

"Are you alright, sir?" she repeats herself, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "Perhaps it's time for you to retire for the night."

"Ten points from Gryffindor, Miss Granger, for being an impertinent bitch," he sneers hatefully.

She can practically _feel _her blood pressure rising, climbing up her arteries, throbbing in her ear. She cannot believe she was justifying his cruelty just moments ago. She can feel her top lip drawing up in a snarl, her joints locking rigid and straight. He smiles at her. It is hostile, a baring of teeth that makes her hackles rise.

"That's all there is with you, isn't it? It's always Potter _this_, Potter bloody fucking _that_—tell me, Miss Granger, do you think he regards you with the same... _adulation _that you do him? Do you think you're _special _to him, that he doesn't just pretend to listen to your nattering because he feels sorry for the poor little Mudblood that nobody lik—"

"Shut up! Shut up!" Her voice is too loud, louder even than his, but she doesn't care, because she is _sick_ of this. "I don't care what you say, because you're _wrong_!"

He draws himself up, and she should really stuff her words back into her mouth and apologize, but the torrent is unstoppable.

"You think you can make me feel small, that you can make me cry and feel like _nothing_, but I matter! What we're doing matters! And _I. Am. Not. Weak_." She punctuates each word with a vicious jab from her finger. She doesn't let it touch him. She may be furious, but she doesn't have a death wish.

"Thirty points from Gryffindor," he sneers. His teeth are even yellower in the scant light, and there is a trail of something faintly red and crusted at the corner of his mouth, and this disgusts her. She stands a little straighter and balls her fists at her sides. Because her teeth are better than his, and because she knows that now, at this very moment, she is not what he thinks she is.

"Fifty points, for all I care! Do it! _Do it_!"

For a moment, she thinks he is going to grab her. His fingers twitch in her direction, and she instinctively recoils. She feels a savage pleasure at the brief look of abashment on his features, but it is gone almost as soon as she notices it. When he speaks, his voice is calm. Duplicitously so.

"What are you trying to prove, you daft girl? That you belong? That you, with your blood, are better than those born into this world? You think you can act like their leader and teach them how to fight the Death Eaters? When you're surrounded, when you're alone and lying in the dirt, which spell are you going to use? Because the time will come when you will have to do the unforgivable."

"We can handle ourselves just fi—"

"Tell me, Granger, which of your friends do you think will learn to maim the fastest, which of them will be good at it?" He has a good ten inches on her, and he uses it to its full advantage. He leans closer. His breath in her face almost makes her retch. "Which of them will _like it_?"

It's _perverse_, the way he knows exactly what to say, exactly how to say it.

"Please. You don't intimidate me," she whispers. And it is a lie. It is a lie.

"You know what your problem is?" he spits again. His eyes are red-rimmed and hideous in a way that she remembers all too clearly. She wonders if he was drunk, then, on that night months ago. She wonders if she didn't linger in the shadow, and if the moon wasn't obscured, would he be standing in front of her right now? There are conversations that can only be had in certain types of darkness.

"Your problem is that you think you're far too good for the rest of us. You just love to show off, don't you? And not just in class, no... you _like_ it, you bloody well _revel _in their appreciative nods and their sycophantic smiles, you _feed_ on all that shit like a fucking drug addict. And doesn't it bother you, doesn't it just _twist _your starched fucking _knickers _that I can see through your shiny facade? That they may not know, not even Harry bloody Potter knows. But _I_do."

He steps even closer (_too close, step back, too close_) and the smell washes over her, the black engulfs her.

"You see, I know you, Granger. It isn't about good and evil with you, it isn't about saving the bloody world. It's about getting riled up into your ideological stupor, until you're frothing at the mouth and bleeding through your fucking eyes, and you convince everyone that you're doing something worthwhile so you can feel pleasantly self-righteous for the rest of the day."

She's heard these words before. Only... it was a different voice, a more insidious tone in her own head. She doesn't know any longer what they are fighting about, but the anger is bubbling too hot and she has to tell him. She has to _prove _to him...

"You're _wrong_," she seethes. "It _isn't_—it's _more_ than-—you're _wrong_..."

"Then tell me, Miss Granger." He draws back. Suddenly, he is the Potions Professor again, standing in front of the class, lecturing them about some ingredient or other. Suddenly, he is graceful and strict and perfectly in control. The change is so quick that it dizzies her. "If this little... club of yours is really about standing up to age-old prejudice, then why so exclusive? Are there any members from the Slytherin House? Have you simply forgotten about them? Or are they too _evil_, too _corrupt_, too much of the wrong sort to be allowed to fight against the Dark Lord?"

_How dare he accuse her of prejudice? _The self-righteous voice in her mind screams. But somewhere in the back, in the crevices that she doesn't care to examine too much, another voice whispers low and shameful words.

"They are free to join, if they want to."

"Are they, now? You would deign to impart knowledge of potentially dangerous magic to people like Miss Parkinson, to Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Goyle? You would _help _Mr. Malfoy, if he wanted to learn how to defend himself? And how would the rest of your group receive them, Miss Granger? These scions of Purebloods, these Death Eater children?"

She opens her mouth to answer, but he beats her to it.

"Of course not, because they're all heading down the same path, aren't they? They're all going to end up like their fathers, and their fathers' fathers before them, in the service of the dark. Because we are all bound, aren't we, we of the _wicked _calling?"

"I don't care about their families. They're all old enough to make their own decisions. They've had their chance, and they've made their choice," she sneers.

His eyes are glassy and unfocused, but they burn and penetrate like a shard of arctic stone. Then he gives her this look, like he is satisfied with her answer. Like he has been waiting for those very same words all along, and she almost expects him to award her five points. And with that one look, she doesn't feel so certain anymore. Like she is all wind and bluster, and he knew this, and now she knows it, too.

And maybe (_possibly, possibly_), she is exactly what he thinks she is.

She is exhausted.

Her nose is runny, her fingers are cold, and she wants nothing more than to crawl into her bed. It's funny, the way this always happens with him. The way it starts out explosive and she is so sure, sure, sure of the things in her head. And she is just so _sick _of this.

She remembers how he looked, that time in Grimmauld Place, with his head tilted up to her. How everything was falling apart around him, and how he looked so much like he _belonged _in a place that could be reduced to ashes in a single paltry breath.

Her eyeballs feel too warm in their sockets.

"Will that be all, sir?"

He straightens, and the look he gives her is all poison triumph.

"Like I've said, sir, I was just finishing my patrol. I've rather an early start tomorrow, and I'd best be getting off to bed. Good evening, Professor." Her voice sounds oddly detached.

He is no longer looking at her. His right hand is clenching and unclenching at his side, and he is glaring at something just beyond her shoulder. She realizes now that there is something in his eyes that shouldn't be there, something sinister and dissolute, something manic, something that tells her that _this is war, little girl, and the great ones are dead._

She turns to leave him to whatever it is he does in the corridors in the middle of the night.

* * *

MASS BREAKOUT FROM AZKABAN  
MINISTRY FEARS BLACK IS "RALLYING POINT"  
FOR OLD DEATH EATERS*

"There you are, Harry,"* said Ron, his voice breathy and incredulous. "That's why he was happy last night..."*

"I don't believe this."* Harry brings his palm down with a smack onto the table, making Neville flinch. "Fudge is blaming the breakout on Sirius?" *

Antonin Dolohov. Augustus Rookwood. Bellatrix Lestrange. Their names are familiar, and she knows that they have stricken fear into hearts far stouter than her own. But she is sixteen going-on-seventeen, and she does not know torture. She does not know death. She does not know the primal call of blood, and how it glistens even in the dark. For her, Azkaban is a dark place on a cold rock, somewhere with frenzied winds and indefatigable waves, somewhere far away, where evil is sent to rot. The fact that these names stand for Death Eaters who have escaped is terrifying, but it is just another problem. Just another obstacle that the Order will have to face.

She looks up to the staff table, already knowing what her eyes will not find. Perhaps there had been a celebration over on the other side of the line. A conviviality to commemorate the return of Voldemort's finest. Perhaps that explained his distasteful... behavior, and that awful _smell_, last night. She twists her lips.

She rips open the Daily Prophet to read the rest of the article. She drowns out the sounds of breakfast, making an irritated noise in her throat. Here they are, standing on the edge of a precipice, waiting for the push, while the rest of the Hogwarts population is busy with their toast and marmalade and blueberry muffins.

"Oh my—"* she breathes as her eyes catch on another headline.

_How dreadful..._

"What now?"* said Harry, peeking over her shoulder to scan the paper.

TRAGIC DEMISE OF MINISTRY OF MAGIC WORKER*

She doesn't even know him. She didn't even remember his name until today. She remembers a vacant stare, knobby fingers clutching at a white blanket, but not much else. They saw him in St. Mungo's, that day they ran into Neville and his grandmother. He had been permanently ill, but now he's dead. They look at each other for a moment. They could have been the last visitors to that ward, the last people, other than his Healer, to have seen him alive. They could have been the last people _he's _seen alive.

_Healer Miriam Strout, who was in charge of Mr. Bode's ward at the time of the incident, has been suspended on full pay and was unavailable for comment yesterday, but a spokeswizard for the hospital said in a statement, "St. Mungo's deeply regrets the death of Mr. Bode, whose health was improving steadily prior to this tragic accident."*_

He received a cutting of Devil's Snare, disguised as something innocent, as a Christmas present. They were there when the Healer brought it in.

She wonders if his life flashed before his eyes, like they say it does before your death. He had been mentally incapacitated, so maybe he didn't even remember his life. Maybe the Healer, Miriam Strout, told him stories of _her_ life as he lay there, unmoving. Maybe she ran out of stories, so she told him again and again until the same events and characters and places really sank in. Maybe he remembered scenes from those stories, until the line blurred between what was his and what was hers. So he died, with someone else's life flashing before his eyes. Maybe he was grateful.

* * *

The rhythmic clicking of her charmed knitting needles fills the room. Lavender gives her a pointed look.

"Sorry, I'm almost done," she smiles appeasingly. _Please, it's only nine o'clock_. She closes the hangings around her bed to muffle the sound anyway. She lies back on her pillow, watching the flash and dim, flash and dim of light on her needles as they churn out section after woolly section of a house-elf sock.

Broderick Bode was an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries. He may have been a husband to someone, a father to a few, perhaps a dear friend to those he left behind. He could have been someone's taciturn neighbor, the lonely old man with the unfaltering stare who went out on his porch at six o'clock every morning to water the hydrangeas. He could have been someone's nosy and overbearing superior, the cantankerous codger with the stultifying voice who insisted that his subordinates use one color of ink for all official paperwork. He could have been someone's running partner, the impossibly hale fifty-year-old with impossibly white teeth who liked to hike his athletic socks up to mid-calf and ate precisely two cups of bran cereal and a boiled egg for breakfast every morning. He would sit there in his kitchen, munching, watching the sunrise through the window, as he had for the past twenty years.

She remembers when she was around eight or nine, and she found out that her next-door neighbor had died of an aneurysm. It was old Mrs. Ruth G. She had had a multitude of children and grandchildren, most of them blonde, all of them tall, and holidays always meant cars spilling out of her driveway and into the Grangers'. When she passed, there had been a funeral somewhere in Dorset, where her family was from. And then there had been a period of two weeks when aggrieved family members kept coming and going into the house next door, selecting their own memories to take home with them.

Or maybe she remembered wrong. Eight is very young, and nine isn't much better. Maybe Mrs. G. had been a batty old lady who drowned in cooking sherry and had too many dead bolt locks on her front door. Maybe there had been no tall, blonde grandchildren, no funeral somewhere in Dorset.

She reaches up to untangle a snag in the thread. She hasn't quite perfected the charm yet, so she has to manually comb her fingers through the knots every fifteen minutes or so.

Broderick Bode is the second casualty. He is an empty bed in the long-term residents' ward of the Spell Damage floor at St. Mungo's. He is three paragraphs on page ten of the Daily Prophet. He is a put-together mental image of sickness shrouded in pale sheets and now he is dead. He is an afterthought.

* * *

Her parents had never made a fuss about Valentine's Day, so she doesn't understand why it's such a big deal for other people. The only appeal it holds for her are the dozens of plates of chocolate cupcakes with the pink coconut frosting piped into fat hearts on top. The house-elves make them every year, and she really shouldn't encourage their involuntary (_from her perspective, at least_) servitude, but she isn't exactly spoilt for sugary treats back home. So when she spies a bit of pink wrapping paper sticking out of Ron's bag, she isn't in the least suspicious. This changes, however, when his face turns beet red as he sees her looking and he shoves it deeper under his books, all the while desperately trying to draw Seamus into conversation. Later, after he has dumped an industrial-sized box of spiced toffee into her arms, her first thought is one of dismay, because her parents will forcibly strap her into the chair and take out the dental drill if they find out she has ingested about five stone worth of sugar. But then as she looks at Ron, with his ears red and the toe of his shoe scuffing the carpet, and she smiles at him and grasps his hand, she thinks that maybe a bit of a fuss wouldn't kill her.

* * *

Umbridge is stumping about the halls, pink bow a-tremble, stopping students and asking them sweetly to turn out their pockets and go through their bags. But the article she commissioned Rita Skeeter to write has spread uncontrollably throughout Hogwarts, if only for the fact that it features Harry Potter. Hermione smiles with a vengeful pleasure. It's too late now, she thinks. And if there's one thing Umbridge could have done to ensure that every single student will read the article, it is to ban The Quibbler, which she had done almost immediately after the appearance of the latest issue. Harry's silent episodes are decreasing in frequency. And Luna Lovegood, who always regarded Hermione with a touch of coolness, was often to be found sitting at the Gryffindor table next to her, imparting advice about how to control unruly hair with a mixture of a young niffler's saliva and black beans.

* * *

Otters can be rather cute, in a way that sort of sneaks up on you. It takes a while to realize this. Yes, they're quite lovable in their own special sort of way. One has to beware of their formidable teeth, however. But yes, barring the teeth, and the short, bristly fur, and the potentially deadly claws, otters are alright. She does not know how she feels about their tails, as they have too much of a rodent quality to them.

She sneaks a glance over at Cho Chang's swan. It is floating along the air gracefully, leaving a trail of silver wisps, its neck bobbing slightly with each movement. Cho is watching it dreamily, turning her head every few seconds to see if Harry is watching her. He is. She twists her lips. A swan is completely predictable. It's majestic and beautiful, but what does it do, really? Aside from meandering about in that lethargic pace that it has, honking every once in a while. See, now while otters may not be the sleekest, most visually pleasing of animals, they are relatively intelligent. At least, more intelligent than certain birds, she surmises. They certainly look dependable. And they can probably defend themselves quite well from predators.

Harry keeps reminding them that producing a Patronus while surrounded by your friends in a well-lighted room in Hogwarts is quite different from producing one in a situation of dire need.

"Oh, don't be such a killjoy. They're so pretty!"* Cho bubbles.

"They're not supposed to be pretty, they're supposed to protect you,"* Harry replies sternly. _Too right_. She can tell, however, that he is immensely pleased by anything that Cho Chang could have to say to him.

Despite the failure of most D.A. members to produce a corporeal Patronus, there is a palpable excitement in the air. This is the lesson that a great many of them have been looking forward to since the group's conception. Neville's face is shiny with effort, and Lavender has taken to stamping her foot every time her wand emits puffs of silver mist, but they keep trying anyway.

She senses it before she sees what is going on. It is the sudden hush that befalls a large group of people, the quiet atmosphere of nervous expectation whenever something strange appears in their midst. She looks fondly at her gamboling silver otter, before allowing it to evaporate in a whisper of silvery luster. Everyone is staring at Harry at this point.

"What's going on?" says Cho at her shoulder.

"I don't know, I expect—" She stops as she hears a familiar voice. A pinched, over-eager voice that can be most often heard eulogizing Harry Potter.

"Harry Potter, sir... Dobby has come to warn you..."*

Warn him of what? _Of what?_

And then her blood roars to her head, and her heart splinters, pieces of it beating in her wrists, her neck, her temple.

Because Dobby starts muttering about a 'she' finding out, a 'she' on her way to the Room of Requirement, and banging his head off Harry's knees. She knows who 'she' is, there is only one 'she' that can strike that sort of trepidation, and she watches as horror dawns on all the other faces as they realize who 'she' is too. There is a funny sort of inertia in the room, and she is sure that everything is unfolding in slow motion for everyone. Until -

"What are you waiting for?" Harry bellows. "RUN!"*

And suddenly the spell is broken. She shoots out her arm and grabs at the one nearest to her, possibly someone female judging by the slimness. She yanks it mercilessly, tightening her grip as the arm tries to twist away from the bite of her nails. Together they stumble toward the doorway where the D.A. members are pushing and shoving at each other to get out. She throws herself into the center of the knot of people, eyeing for gaps in between wriggling backs, crouching low and pushing her way through legs and knees. She looks around for Harry and calls for him, spotting him in the middle of the throng with Dobby in his arms. He says something to the stricken house-elf and Dobby runs off. She resumes pushing as soon as she is sure that Harry is behind her. She remembers spotting a flash of red earlier, and she knows that Ginny will be safe with Fred and George. Ron was standing right by the door when Dobby came, so he ought to be alright as well.

She reaches a point where the pressure is unbearable and they are all breathing the same air and she has to open her mouth to suck in—to breathe—_oxygen! Oxygen!_Her hair is plastered to the back of her neck. Someone's elbow slams against the side of her head. A hand is shoving at the space between her shoulder blades. And her heart is thudding wild and her stomach is churning angry and her eyes are swivelling left-right-left-right for escape—

The pushing eases and she is past the doorway. But still she cannot stop to breathe. She tugs at the unknown arm now slick with sweat and pounds down the hallway. She is certain with all her heart that a hand will clutch at her throat, her hair, her shirt and pull her down to the ground. She pumps her legs harder (_harder, faster, harder_) and a stitch is leaking acid into the flesh surrounding her ribs. Someone crashes to the floor behind her but she doesn't care because the tapestry is right there, _right there!_

She hurtles into the thick rug and hopes that she remembered the passageway correctly. The floor is briefly illuminated, then everything is velvet darkness as the tapestry flaps back into place over the hidden doorway. The close walls exude a chill that freezes the sweat on her skin. She skids to a halt and swivels her wand around, but then lowers it as she realizes that the chorus of labored breathing she hears is their own, multiplied and sent back to them by the stone walls. The arm once again tries to slip away.

"No, stop it! We have to get to the library!" she whispers harshly.

"Alright, alright, just... I can't—let me breathe for a second." So it _is_a girl. The voice isn't familiar, so it isn't someone from Gryffindor. She throws her arm out and her hand grazes a torso, doubled over and breathing hard. It is someone else, someone bulkier than the owner of the wrist in her hand. She sighs in relief. For one second, for one terrifying second of mingled guilt and panic, she had thought that it had been Harry who crashed into the floor behind her earlier. But he had apparently managed to follow her unspoken plan.

"Harry, is that you? We have to go."

"R-right," he pushes out. His voice is husky from the strain.

They round the passageway and descend the three flights of stairs. If she remembers correctly, this leads to the fourth floor. If they could just get to the library they could pretend that they've been there all along. She hopes that the other members didn't think they could make it if they ran all the way to their common rooms.

"There should be a doorknob somewhe—yes! Here, come on!" She twists the knob, wincing at the soft _wumph _of the catch being released. They emerge in an alcove beside the Prefects' bathroom.

"Do you think Umbridge checked the library already?" the girl asks. It is Cho Chang.

"No, Dobby said she was heading straight for the Room of—" She stops, turning her gaze back on Cho and the boy standing next to her.

"Michael Corner?" Her voice is shrill, her tone condemnatory.

"Yeah, sorry. You thought I was Potter—"

"Why didn't you_ say _anything?"

"Hey! I could hardly breathe up there, at the pace you were goi—"

"Shut up! Where's Harry? _Where is he? _Didn't you see him?" She yanks the door open, expecting Harry to be standing on the other side. But there is nothing.

"Er, I reckon it was him that fell... I heard someone cast a Tripping Jinx, and then I think Umbridge got him. She sounded very pleased with herself..." Cho said.

No, no, no, no, no... this can't be happening.

She pinches the bridge of her nose, willing her brain to come up with anything, anything, anything. She remembers the look in Harry's eyes as he walked amongst them, the pride, the enjoyment of having _something _to look forward to besides Occlumency with Professor Snape and Defense with Umbridge, besides a lifetime ban from Quidditch, besides the nightmares of a smiling Voldemort, besides being Harry Potter in a world that is ripping at the seams. She remembers the earnestness with which he tried to demonstrate the proper casting of the Patronus Charm. She remembers how he seemed to forget, finally, whatever it is that makes him close off and stare at the fireplace for hours. If they were caught now, if Umbridge dissolved the D.A. now...

She slumps her sweat-stained back against the wall and presses the heels of her hands into her temples.

* * *

The nights are getting balmy once again. The stars are ridiculously bright in the sky, and everything is still. This could have been just another night on the Astronomy Tower, if not for the O.W.L. examiners pacing behind them, glancing occasionally at their charts. She sets up her telescope, adjusting it on its stand. She presses her eye to the eyepiece and marks down the position of Venus on her chart.

She read somewhere, in one of her Dad's astronomy books, that everything in the universe is composed of exploded stars. Sometime in the early universe when the first giants were born out of disorder and chaos, there were only light elements in the universe. The heavier stuff, everything that matters for the sustainment of life, was produced much later, in the bowels of those burning titans. They burned briefly before it finally got too bright, and then they perished in violent rapture, scattering those molecules far and wide. So every atom in your body came from the death of a star, and the atoms in your right hand could have come from a star say, ten thousand light years away from the star that produced the atoms of your left. When she read that so many years ago, the poetry of it never really struck her. Here they are now, plotting little pinpoints of light on a piece of parchment, pinpoints of light that don't really have a discernible effect on their day-to-day lives. But those are their forefathers, really. Their progenitors. Somewhere in the universe, some time billions of years ago, a star died for her, and maybe the evidence can still be found twinkling in today's night sky.

* * *

She remembers saying something about a _saving-people thing_, and fury in Harry's face.

She remembers a hasty plan, something she never approves of normally, but she has to do it because she can sense that something is up. She remembers creeping underneath the Invisibility Cloak, not carefully enough because she was never good at this sort of thing, Harry very agitated beside her. Then Ginny's voice saying something about Garroting Gas, Harry yelling _Number twelve, Grimmauld Place _in Umbridge's fireplace.

"Sirius? Sirius, are you there?"*

And then Kreacher lying, lying—a hand yanking her hair and her neck bending all the way forever backward, the smell of stale sweat in unwashed robes, Millicent Bulstrode's unnaturally sharp teeth in an ill-intended smile, then her wand is wrested easily, pathetically from her grasp. Then despair and frustration as the Inquisitorial Squad bring them in one by one, everything over before anything's begun. Then Umbridge's slack face in Harry's, acquisitive and eager.

"Draco—fetch Professor Snape."*

Then relief, because. Because.

Counting down the seconds until—"You wanted to see me, Headmistress?"* Cool and collected. He looks around, uncaring, but she knows he is furious because they've been so, so, so stupid (I'm sorry, save us, I'm sorry). She knows he will do what needs to be done. She wills him to look at her, putting everything at stake in her eyeballs, willing her irises to tell him. He doesn't have Veritaserum, but it is a lie, and he is on their side. Triumph, because _fuck you, Umbridge_. He still isn't looking at her. Harry screaming about Padfoot, Padfoot in the place where it's hidden.* Finally, finally, a flash of black meeting her, and she could almost cry. Then the door closes behind him and a painful grinding in her lungs because everything is hopeless once again.

She remembers a threat of torture and rage in her bones and a desperation bigger than anything she has ever known shoving against her chest wall. She remembers trying to keep her eyes open to force the tears to form. Snivelling like an idiot. Lying through her teeth.

She remembers crashing into the Forbidden Forest, with Harry and Professor Umbridge in tow. Then the sound of hooves pounding the earth, the smell of a giant's blood on her robes.

She remembers flying over the lights of London with nothing visible to support her nothing but terror, terror, terror.

She remembers an atrium, gleaming and beautiful. A fountain of golden figures glistening looking like it is the most true most beautiful most precious thing in the world.

She remembers a large room. Black. Circular. Blue flames in blue darkness that reflected on identical doors. She remembers those doors rotating faster and faster.

She remembers a tank filled with nightmare-alien-creatures, squirming in pearly white liquid. She remembers detached horror—_are those brains?_Her voice sounding strange and small.

She remembers a cavernous space, an amphitheater? Stone steps. An archway, sinister and seductive. She remembers the fascinated terror with which Harry looked at it, the low light reflecting in his glasses. _Let's go, let's go, okay?_ she had coaxed him. _Nobody's talking, Harry,_she had said, tugging on his arm, pulling him from the voices that seek to transfix and slay.

She remembers clocks. Sparking and glinting clocks, every kind of clock she could imagine.

She remembers dusty shelves. Rows and rows of them, covered in glass orbs. She remembers thinking, _no one's here, we'll be fine, no one's here_, scanning for row ninety-seven.

Then scanning in the darkness, squinting into shadow. Nothing. No one.

Then Harry, whispering to himself, _he's right down at the end. I saw him. Sirius, Sirius. He might be... Or maybe..._

She remembers an orb with Harry's name on it, and her snapping at him _Don't touch it! Don't take it!_Because it she felt the danger of it brown and disgusting slopping under her skin, and she was so sure that something was going to happen.

She remembers voices. Black shapes materializing out of thin air, eyes peeking through slits in hoods, wand tips promising doom. Then a woman with the feverish low scratching voice, with the lovely face ravaged by something eating at her insides. Mocking Harry, taunting Harry with the death of his parents, the death of his friends. She remembers adrenaline searing her veins. She remembers the faint amusement, because the voice in her head is nagging her, _You thought you were brave, didn't you?_Ron stiffening, Ginny whimpering. Harry buying time, stalling, every single one of them idiots with too much bravado.

Then screaming, threatening, her mind hardly working, her heart seizing in her throat. Then a cascade of glass, running_fleeing_havetogetaway, running fast, running blindly, casting over her shoulder. Masked faces getting closer. Her friends, _her friends_, pleasebeokaypleasebeokay, Harry's fist in her robes dragging her tripping and flailing, _Neville run faster, run faster_, something tearing at her ankle something dripping down her temple warm and wet and _disgusting_, and she smears at it with her palm and a funny thought, it looks just like mud in that darkness, in that blue ghost darkness—

What do we do, Harry? What do we do?

Hiding under a desk, hoping, praying to something, anything, oh God something trickling down her trousers—

Please—I don't want to die—only sixteen!—Idon'twanttodie—

_Check under the desks_ one of them says in a deep voice, crawling out from under because she isn't a coward she isn't a bloody coward and then her heart stops and she almost throws herself onto her knees to beg and plead because a wand is in her face and a voice says _Avada_—

Harry toppling into the Death Eater, Neville clattering around somewhere behind her, and one more, two more minutes of life regained and it's worth it, running_fleeing_havetogetaway, time trapped in a bell jar, laughing because _what the bloody hell_ is that Death Eater doing with a baby's head on his shoulders, hysterical, eyes leaking, head throbbing, legs melting, smashing into a bookcase and heavy things falling, hitting her in all her bony spots, catching her temple, her ribs, her hip and crying out, swallowing vomit, Harry petrifying one of the enemy, her saying _well done_, a silent slash, a purple flame, something cold and jagged twisting in her liver and slashing at her lungs, all her air rushing out, all the lights rushing out, and her thinking, _you wanted a push? You wanted a push? THIS is the bloody push!_—

Falling finally into the precipice, tripping over the edge and they aren't, they will never be _old_ enough, or _clever_ enough, or _brave_enough—

I'm sorry. Save us. I'm sorry.

A flash of black a deadly voice asking _you think you can teach them?_—

Pain. Pain. Pain. Pain. And silence.

* * *

There is a pressure on her chest. She pushes feebly against it, her arms blocks of solid concrete at her sides.

"No... no... no..." someone is whining. And it isn't her, because that person's voice sounds like death.

Somewhere far away, somewhere millions of miles away a deep voice says, "Water, Pomfrey."

Bustling and fussing. A large, warm hand at the back of her neck easing her head up. A blaze in her lungs at the movement.

She is crying. She is weeping. Through eyes gummed shut and crusty.

"Drink this."

But the water is too cold, her throat too dry, the air too empty and she chokes and sputters, feeling it spill onto her naked chest.

Her naked chest. Her naked chest.

She panics, trying to pull the covers up, but there aren't any. The hand eases her head back down into the pillow. She lies there, sobbing and naked.

"Calm down, Granger." The voice is stern. She complies. "Madam Pomfrey has unclothed your torso to make it easier for me to heal you. You were hit with a dark spell. I need to know what it was."

A silent slash, a purple flame, pain, pain, pain, pain—

"Granger! Stop thrashing—"

A hand between her breasts, fingers at the base of her throat, pushing her into the bed. It is warm and strong and firm.

"I need to know the spell, or you will die."

"I don't—I don't know," she croaks. "Don't let me, don't let me. I'm only sixteen. Don't let me."

"I won't. But I need to know—

"I don't know! Please, he was silenced—Silencing Charm, I don't know!" She is desperate. Already she feels the magic wreaking havoc inside her, and it is blunt and putrid.

The hand leaves her chest. Footsteps walk away. This is the push into the precipice.

"No! Please, Professor, come back! Professor! _Professor_!"

One second.

Three.

Eight.

She is screaming incoherently, ripping the muscles of her throat. The pain, the pain. Blood coating her teeth. Her chest on fire.

"Bloody hell, be still, Granger!" And then, gently, "I'm here... I won't leave you."

A finger rubbing something into the slits of her closed eyelids.

"I need to see. This will help you open your eyes."

The light is dim, could be dawn, could be twilight. Madam Pomfrey is standing next to her bed with her hands clasped together under her chin, her eyes wet, her lower lip trembling. It is strange to see her like this. Hermione doesn't remember the Mediwitch showing any sign of weakness in the face of any of Harry's injuries.

"_Oh_, Hermione dear," she breathes.

"Look at me, Granger." Her breath comes in short gasps. His face has a grey tinge to it, and he looks more angry than she has ever seen him. The buttons at his throat are undone and she can just make out the jut of his collarbone.

"Professor Snape needs to know the spell they used on you, love. Please look at him."

"I thought... _Oh_..."

Her voice catches as she sees her chest.

There is no blood, no laceration. But her skin is a sickly cadaver yellow, her veins black, turgid, pulsating hypnotically. There is a large purple welt running diagonally across her torso, starting at her left shoulder, running across the nipple of her left breast, and ending at her right hip. And... she bites back a scream. Her skin is moving and shifting. It is subtle, but she can _feel_ it. Like her organs are _churning _under her skin...

She heaves herself over the side of her bed and vomits. Madam Pomfrey's small, slightly damp hands pull her hair back. "Oh dear, oh dear," she says, over and over like a litany.

She drops back into her pillow.

_I'm going to die._

_God._

_I'm going to die._

_I need... God—_

_I'm going to die._

"Perhaps someday, but not tonight. I won't let you die tonight." She doesn't realize she's been saying it out loud.

A hand slips under her chin, fingers clasped against her jaw. He brings his face close to hers until she can feel his breath on her lips. "I need to know," he whispers. It sounds like an apology but it couldn't be because he has done nothing wrong. He puts his hand back on her chest, and then she forgets to breathe as everything is plunged in black.

Things flash before her eyes, things she regrets. It turns out Harry _did _have a saving-people thing. But it isn't his fault.

Antonin Dolohov's febrile glare and damning smile are before her again, the flash of purple, the pain. Then, he is gone from her head. Somehow she feels colder. She sees him doing something with his wand pointed at her chest, sees him chanting low and melodious through the tears in her eyes. The heavy warmth on her chest is still there, and it is an anchor, a lifeline.

She is watching them from somewhere else, watching herself go into a seizure on the bed, watching as the welt becomes a deep red, approaches a gut-clenching black, watching as her skin churns and finally as it splits, blood-splatter like in the films. Somewhere, someone is yelling, "You won't, you won't, not tonight!"

She watches as he doesn't flinch, her blood dripping from his face, the tip of his nose, his lip. Blood in a little pool in the hollow above his collarbone. It is reddish black against his ashen white and it is the color of shame. Madam Pomfrey is full-on sobbing now.

She watches as he continues to sing his incantation, as her skin slowly knits back together, as the wound closes in on itself and heals before her eyes into an ugly, raised scar. It is pink, and bumpy, passing from her left shoulder, twisting around her left nipple, ending at her right hip.

There is a stalling in the pulleys and weights within her heart and a sterile solace in the black of his eyes in the weight of his hand pressing into her and I'm sorry save us I'm sorry, I couldn't teach them but they told me that this, _this_, is what it means to be brave, and forgive me, forgive me for I know not what I do—

When does childhood end?

It ends _here_. And it ends _now_. And it ends forever.

* * *

*Taken directly from canon.


	4. Four

She dreams in color. In front of her are beaten beleaguered faces distorted with petrified glass eyes, and they look like her friends but it can't be real because reality is more than just shades of craven piss-yellow and mud-blood-red and cryptic black. Reality is so much more than just fear in three colors, so she makes herself know that their dead faces aren't dead at all and shakes herself free of the whiteness stretched taut over that terrible necropolis and she wakes up.

Ron is asleep in the bed beside hers and his soft snoring makes her think of things like doing homework by the fire or sneaking down to the kitchens. The partitions that were separating them last night are now drawn back and she can clearly see the bruises under his eyes and the weals on his arms. They are at that halfway point between knitting themselves back together and still being open rawness, and they are yellowish scabs webbed around bits of pink. She feels a weight against her leg and she looks up to see that it is Ginny's head rested against her.

It is one of those chilly, indistinct summer mornings when you can't be too sure of what's real and what's just residue from your kaleidoscope dreams. It is a perfectly balanced combination of soft sounds and shadows that forces her back under the covers.

* * *

She is woken by a soft breeze smelling faintly of laundry detergent and grass. She cracks her eyelids open, shuts them again at the unexpected intrusion of sunlight, then opens them with considerably more caution. Madam Pomfrey has opened all the windows and it is turning out to be a ludicrously pleasant day outside. One of those blissful days that meld into a blur of fragrant sunshine and melted marshmallow gauze in a blue so profound it hurts her eyes. Leaves a-rustle, lake a-sparkle, laughing students a-gambol and all that rot. Ginny has disappeared and Ron is still asleep, his back turned to her so his arms aren't visible anymore. His snores are low and even. She counts the seconds between his next snore's strident beginnings and its softly sputtering end. Seven seconds, with four-second intervals in between. She wonders if his snoring is always this perfectly rhythmic, and if so, if Harry has ever noticed.

Soon Madam Pomfrey comes bustling out of her office carrying a tray supporting five tall, glass vials. Another tray with the same amount of vials floats along behind her. She is surprised as the Mediwitch sets both trays on the table beside her bed, having thought that the other potions were for Ron. The sun bounces happily off the thick glass encasing something that looks like bottled pus, with the pinkish streaks of blood and bits of mucous and everything.

"Now, Miss Granger, it is vital that you take the prescribed dosages of these potions for the next three days. The dark curse you were struck with was less effective than it would have been had the incantation been said aloud. Nevertheless, there is quite enough damage to be going on with."* She speaks with her customary adroitness, with that military efficiency in her movements, nary a trace of moisture in her eye. Hermione is grateful for this return to familiarity. She nods obediently.

"Professor Snape has been so kind as to brew these for you last night. Unfortunately, nothing can be done about their flavor without compromising efficacy..."

Ten different potions later, Hermione finds herself thick-tongued and groggy. The combination of clashing tastes and smells has left her mouth feeling bristly and sour, and no amount of water could get rid of it. Madam Pomfrey collects the vials with a swish of her wand. They clink together as they follow her back into her office.

Her vision is rapidly blurring at the edges. Little fuzzy dots float in front of her eyes, similar to those glowing specks of dust found in streams of sunlight. When she was much younger, she remembers her parents laughing at her as she tried to capture those specks with her fingers. She remembers wanting a pet quite badly, but they couldn't get one because of her Dad's allergies and her Mum's general aversion to untidiness. So one day, she had a brilliant idea, and smeared her palms with glue with the intent of finally possessing one of the pretty little floating animals. She had been greatly upset when it didn't work.

A soporific warmth starts just below her belly button and spreads out into her chest, her arms, her legs. The bed is the most comfortable bed she has ever lain down on in her entire life. She pats the mattress affectionately.

"Hermione?"

She ignores the voice, thinking that the potions are messing with her perception. She hears rustling, then squeaking as the mattress on the bed next to hers bounces under the bulk of a fidgeting Ron.

"Hermione?"

"Wha—" She turns to look at him and her head spins from the sudden movement.

"Ro... Ron? Thought... you... sleeping..." Her jaw feels strange. The words come sluggardly through lips that feel stiff.

"Yeah, I was just waiting for Madam Pomfrey to go away. I thought you could tell. I heard you counting."

"No, no, I thought... I thought you were just a very... a skilled snorer..."

"A _what_? Did you just say a skilled—never mind. Listen, how are you feeling?" The look he gives her is intense and she feels compelled to answer him through the haze settling in her brain.

"Fine... I'm fine, Ron. Wha-what about you?"

"I heard you last night. I was out of it, but I heard you screaming. They gave me Dreamless Sleep, but I felt like I could still hear you."

She doesn't know what to say.

"I thought you were going to die, Hermione."

Her brain clears a little. The atmosphere between them swells into one of mutual embarrassment as the seconds tick along. She feels as if he has pulled her across some line, somehow, this line that she refuses to see. It is an odd feeling whose source she can only grasp at but can't really understand yet. Nevertheless, she senses the need to bring them both back into familiar territory. She makes a supreme effort to wrinkle her nose and give him a _don't-be-silly _kind of smile.

"Come... oh, come off it... it was nothing. I'm fine now, I told you. Tell me about you."

He shifts under his blankets, tucks them firmly under his chin, and clears his throat. He stretches his arms, perhaps a little too emphatically, judging by his grimace of discomfort.

"A couple of bruises, nothing serious. Madam Pomfrey told me I might have some scarring, but that's it. I don't even know why I'm still here, actually. But if it means I don't have to go to class..."

"Wha... what happened to you, anyway?"

"You remember that tank of brains back there?" He jerks his chin over his shoulder, as if the Department of Mysteries is right behind him. "Harry told me I tried to summon one or something incredibly daft like that. He was here when you were asleep. I don't really remember, but apparently the brains had _tentacles_," he snorts.

He pulls this face, all shiny teeth and innocent charm, and flexes his biceps at her.

"But see, I'm feeling rather fine now. Bloody fantastic, if you ask me," he grins.

Normally she would think this sweet. Normally she would laugh and try not to look flattered at the look of self-satisfaction on his face. But this morning in the Hospital Wing, with her chest still bound and ten different potions coursing through her veins, she can see how easy he takes things. How far he has to fall if he doesn't act seriously for once. He always tries to pull this sort of rubbish, trying to play it off, flashing those big smiles whenever he's happy and sticking out his bottom lip when he's upset. It's like it's the only way he knows how to do things, with everyone in the bloody room to see exactly what he's feeling. Normally she would let it go, _normally, normally_. But this isn't normal. This whole thing is something puked out of a bloody kaleidoscope, something wrenched out of a dream. This time she feels something close to panic.

"It's not funny, Ron."

"Sure it is, can you imagine what I probably looked like wrestling one of those brai—"

"Shut up, Ron. It's not funny. It's _not _funny."

He looks hurt and puzzled. "What are you on abou—"

"Look, just stop it! You look so _thick_, laughing about things like that! It doesn't work, alright? If you want to pretend that everything's fine, that's not how you do it, because you look _so thick_. Can't you see? Everything's falling apart, Ron! We all know what's happening... and if you still... if you still want to make jokes..." She hardly knows what she's saying anymore. The artificial pull of potion-induced sleep has never been stronger.

"We've got to sort things out, Ron. We've been really careless. It isn't a game anymore," she slurs.

To her surprise Ron's response is calm and measured, a side of him that will become more perceptible in the years to come.

"I know that. I know it isn't a game, Hermione. I know what we did was stupid, and maybe it was Harry's fault for not listening to you, maybe it was our fault for not trying to stop him hard enough, I don't know. Everything's going to start soon. I mean, _really _start. I was just... I thought you were going to die."

There it is again, the sudden bashfulness, the feeling of intruding upon something big, the feeling of leaving something behind them. It is the same feeling she gets when her eyes pass the last word on the last page of a book she dearly loves. She is at a loss for words and so she just sits there twiddling with her blanket. They might have gone on that way forever. She is grateful for the edges of her vision bleeding together, the colors consuming each other, until she just can't keep her eyes open anymore. She exaggerates her yawn a little bit so he won't think that she's just avoiding conversation. He yawns too.

"I suppose I should let you rest, then. I expect those potions are doing a right job on your head," he says, and if his words seem a little artificial to both their ears, she doesn't say anything about it.

Later, when she is older, she will recall these little incidents when she, Harry, and Ron would veer too close to something they've never touched upon before. It started around third year, maybe a couple of times in second year. At the time she wouldn't realize it, but later, she will recognize the signs: the awkward silence, the confused hesitation, the same reluctance to let go of some vague idea that they all shared, before someone suddenly changes the subject to something a little too silly, something a little too childish, and the moment is gone.

* * *

Harry makes some half-hearted excuse to leave the room. He smiles and scratches the back of his head, apologizing for interrupting the conversation. Ron looks surprised and starts to say something, but Ginny gives him a little pinch on the toe and he falls silent.

Sirius Black is the third casualty. He is a roguish smile on an old wedding photo. He is the faint echo of thirty-year-old Christmas carols wafting through the tacky, mold-caked panelled walls. He is an absence in a shard of glass. He is regret in a moment too quiet. He is the charming laugh you always expect to hear after a raunchy joke, a laugh at once boyish and jaded.

* * *

Three days later she is permitted to leave the Hospital Wing. There is a slight ache around her ribcage, and she isn't supposed to do any heavy lifting or move excessively, but she feels more or less patched up. She had made her excuses, saying something about being behind on last-minute knitting for the house-elves, slipping away before Harry and Ron could think about her alibi too closely. She would have loved to knit more socks. She purses her lips at the image of a quivering Dobby with what looked like _all _her hats on top of his head and her socks worn as makeshift sleeves, knobby green hands sticking out through holes punched into where the toes ought to go. She hadn't noticed it at the time, thinking of nothing but the need to get away from Umbridge. Later, she remembered. She figures that Harry had probably known this, but he hadn't told her. He probably didn't want to hurt her feelings. No, he probably found it funny. The prat.

Just the same, she would have given up on her knitting even if she hadn't found out about Dobby pilfering all of her hard work. The whole thing smelled too much of entrapment for her tastes.

She finds herself wandering down her patrol route. She isn't keen on returning to her dorm. She's been partially packed for two weeks now, with only her school books and uniform stored outside of her trunk. If she were honest with herself, she would realize that she is avoiding the possibility of running into Ginny. She doesn't really feel like rehashing the events of that night. She knows that Ginny will want to talk to her alone without having to dodge around certain parts for fear of bringing up things that Harry isn't quite ready for at the moment. If she were honest with herself she would realize that maybe it is _she _who isn't quite ready. But she's feeling a little achy, and she hates acknowledging her own selfishness, and so she convinces herself that the reason she doesn't want to go to her dorm is because she's more than halfway done with packing.

She surmises the time to be around noon or so. The hallways are mostly empty. A few stragglers, mostly in the younger years, nod or smile at her as she passes them. She gives them her best 'Hermione Granger, Gryffindor Prefect' smile. The other students are probably either in class or having lunch at the Great Hall.

And then she reaches that tricky set of steps that had her flailing her arms in September of last year.

Then his classroom.

Then the alcove she sat in that time she fled from his bitter barbs.

And then, before she knows it, she is standing before his office door, her fist suspended in front of her, her knuckles just brushing rough wood.

Over and over she had gone through this moment while convalescing in the Hospital Wing. She would march into the dungeons and up to his office, her stride confident and purposeful. Then she would knock firmly. Not too insistently, mind, but loud enough that he would know that she shan't taking no for an answer. He would make her wait but then he would eventually decide that letting her say what she came to say would be easier for both of them. _Enter_, he would pronounce stentoriously, and she would square her shoulders and push his door open. She would keep her face pleasantly neutral, keep her back straight, her hands clasped in that professional-looking, don't-mess-with-me sort of way behind her back. _Thank you for saving my life, Professor_. Then she would be on her way.

She had thought (hoped) it would take her much longer to get here. The sheer solidity of the door in front of her puts her off, almost. Has it always been this big? _Merlin_, the thing's a hefty chunk that reaches almost a meter above her head. It almost puts her off. Almost, almost.

There really is no room for error in the little scenario she'd planned. She takes a breath and draws her wrist back to knock on the door. It swings open in front of her. Because, obviously, he already knows she's here, and that she's been standing here for the good part of five minutes.

Because he is the most distrustful man she knows and the air is practically buzzing with the strength of his wards (_his wards, his bloody wards, damnit Hermione!_).

Her fist just manages to connect with it, producing a pathetic_ thump _that isn't at all close to the deliberate knocking she had envisioned.

"Miss Granger, what are you doing here?"

He is sitting behind his desk, scribbling into a piece of parchment. She can just make out his spiky script from where she is standing. A missive, perhaps. Maybe an order addressed to an apothecary for more ingredients for the next school year.

"Er... Good afternoon, Professor. I came here because I wanted to thank you, sir. For sav—"

Suddenly, _thank you for saving my life _sounds so... mundane, to her own ears. So very insipid and insincere. She bites her tongue, furrows her brows. What the hell is she supposed to say now?

He looks up at her from his letter. There is a smidge of ink on his thumb, a tiny smear right by the fingernail. She wonders if he tried to rub it off with his finger, or if he hadn't yet noticed its presence. He quirks his brow at her and she notices twin echoes of the ink smear polluting pale white under his eyes.

"I believe you wish to express your gratitude to me for saving your life. Am I correct?" He doesn't wait for her answer and instead resumes writing, every angle of his body, the forward tilt of his head to the parchment set to the tone of dismissal. "You are welcome, Miss Granger."

_You're welcome?_

She frowns.

How very... not difficult.

She certainly hadn't expected that. Where is the sneer, the piercing stare, the bite of words far too close to her own thoughts? She had expected him to say something along the lines of 'save your breath, ensuring your continued existence isn't quite the act of virtue that you imagine'. She shuffles her feet uneasily.

"What are you still doing here, girl?" Ah, there it is. The impatience, the diminutive address of _girl_ intended to make her feel like some pre-pubescent irritant. The familiar expression of hell-hounded vexation on his face strikes a chord within her. She recalls the heavy heat of his hand on her bare chest. _I need to know_ in a hot breath, branded into her mouth. _I need to know. I won't let you, but I need to know._

Suddenly it is surging through her system, tingling in her tongue, the need, the _urgency_ to let him know just how much it meant, what he did for her. Because he _did_save her life and she doesn't have enough words but he must know. He must know. Her mouth opens before she can carefully measure her words and her voice is breathless, her fingers wringing the hem of her shirt.

"I just—I wanted to let you know that I am truly, sincerely grateful for what you've done. I know you probably don't think much of it, but I—"

"Yes, yes, spare me your platitudes of appreciation. You may leave now."

"But sir, I don't think you understand just how—"

"Miss Granger!" he barks, setting his quill down. "Has the curse migrated to your ear canal, or are you simply refusing to comprehend my words? I see being inches away from death has done nothing to impair your disregard for authority. I said, _you may leave. Now_."

"But -"

"Did you come here thinking I would commend you for what you and your lot tried to pull off?" The way he says this, the way he closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, the way the muscles of his throat twitch as he tilts his head back, the way his voice suddenly sounds flat and worn to her ears forces her own voice into silence. His anger is pulled from the room in one big whoosh and now there is nothing but exhaustion in the lines around his mouth.

"No! I didn't... I just wanted to thank you—"

"What you did was foolish, Miss Granger. Potter was selfish for dragging you all into it, but that was to be expected. After all, nothing is more inevitable than Harry Potter trying to play the hero. You, however." He fixes her with a stern look. "You were stupid and naive for going along with him, arrogant for thinking that you could handle this on your own. Have you any thought for the consequences of your actions? For what this means for the Order? Did you consider, at any point during your little rendezvous, the implications of your death? Of _Potter's _death?"

"I know—"

"You do not. It may come as a shock to you, but for once in your life, you _do not know_. You could have died. Your friends could have died. Yes, yes, it would have been a greatly lamentable tragedy. But if _Potter _had died... Do you understand what that means?"

"Sir, I... but no one died - I mean, well, Harry didn't..."

"I see Potter hasn't told you of the contents of the prophecy. What a surprise," he says, an ironic twist to his lips.

"Prophecy? You mean that orb? But surely _prophecies _are..." Preposterous? False? She thinks of watery eyes magnified by thick spectacles, bangles and beads and scarves around a neck resembling a chicken's, scarlet poofs and crystal balls in a room drenched in the scent of incense. The very idea of some... some vague omnipotent force directing all their actions and fates makes her scoff.

"Ah, yes, I recall your particular distaste for Divination." He leans forward in his chair, his mouth curving into a coldly amused smirk. "But you must be younger than I thought, if you believe that any of us are truly free."

_We are all bound, aren't we? We of the wicked calling_.

She shakes the image from her head.

"But sir, what prophecy are you talki—"

"Never you mind, you silly girl," he sneers, all traces of amusement vanished. "The point is, your actions have resulted in months of work and preparation unravelled, in the loss of life. Sirius Black is dead. Dead, do you understand that? Because of you."

"How dare you? I regret Sirius' death as much as anyone! You hated him! You—you goaded him about how useless he was! How can you sit there say that I don't know what his death means?"

He speaks as if he hadn't heard her.

"Do not labor under the delusion that his death was somehow noble or poetic. It was a pointless death, an entirely avoidable death, and as narcissistic and juvenile as he was, he did not deserve it. I am not impressed with you, Miss Granger."

And it _hurts_, this knowledge that he is right. There isn't anything that he can tell her that she hasn't told herself when she lay in bed in the dark Hospital Wing. But somehow, coming from his mouth, with his eyes like three-inch rust-covered nails in her own, it is much, much worse. She is disappointed in herself. And maybe a little disappointed in him too, because after he saved her, after that night when her life clung to a silk-spun thread tied around his finger, she had thought...

What, exactly?

She no longer knows.

"Then why did you save me at all?" she mutters. And she is aware of how she sounds like a resentful child. She crosses her arms, bracing herself. "Why? Why go through all that effort if everything was my bloody fault anyway? You should have left me to die, if I'm such trouble to everybody!" The whinging words coming out of her own mouth appall her.

The look he gives her is frigid. Impassive. She feels even smaller.

"Is that what you wanted, then?" he says quietly. "Rest assured, had I known, then I would gladly have let your organs melt into a bloody froth in the Hospital Wing."

_I won't let you die tonight._His breath on her cheeks, his eyes boring into hers. He is lying. The certainty of this knowledge surprises her, but it remains to stay. He wouldn't have let her die there, no matter what he says now.

_God, I'm such an idiot. _

"I'm... sorry. I'm _really _sorry," she sighs defeatedly. "That was... inexcusable, and grossly ungrateful of me. I shouldn't have said that." She ought to have known that anything she might have planned would inevitably be shot to hell if Professor Snape is involved. She lets her arms drop to her sides.

"I'm glad you didn't let me die, Professor Snape. Thanks for your time, I'll let you get on with your letter now."

She turns to leave, avoiding his eyes. She winces at the sudden movement and puts a hand to her side.

"Miss Granger, come here."

"Sir?"

"Come closer, Granger."

She turns to him. He is standing now. She walks over to the front of his desk, keeping her eyes on her feet. She watches as the tip of a boot appears at the left corner of her vision, then a hem of black. He is standing in front of her now and _goodness_, she hadn't even heard his footsteps. She watches as he lifts his right hand from his side, as his hand approaches her face (_What? What is he doing?_) and she can almost feel the warmth of his thumb pressing against the hollow beneath her bottom lip, his knuckles against the sharp rim below her chin, forcing her eyes to look into his. But before his fingers even touch her skin he jerks his hand away as though burnt. It lowers in a fist down at his side.

"Are you still in pain?" She feels his breath on the top of her head.

"What? Er—no, no, I'm fine, " she stammers, glancing up briefly but looking down before she can meet his eyes. She focuses instead at a spot of fluff on his shoulder.

"Look at me." She tilts her head up slowly, taking in the tightness of his jaw, his slightly chapped lower lip, the line of his nose before her gaze comes to a brief rest on his eyes. He is pale, paler even than Malfoy. The whitest shade of pale almost crassly offset by a glint of obdurate black. She opens her mouth to speak, but he interrupts her.

"Don't lie to me, Granger."

"Just a little... When-when I move too suddenly..." she confesses.

He stalks off. She continues to stare at the spot where his shoulder had been, her cheeks warm. She isn't certain if he'd dismissed her or if he expected her to wait in his office.

The slamming of a door to her right makes her jump. He doesn't stand in front of her but instead returns to sit at his desk, placing a squat glass jar at its center. He raises an eyebrow at her.

"Why the devil is your face so red?"

"Oh, is it? I just—do you feel that? It just got really warm all of a sudden. Strange, seeing as we're in the dungeons and all, even considering that it's June. I mean, it doesn't get warm here, does it? I suppose the internal temperature of Hogwarts is very well regulated, but the dungeons are always cold. Which is why I find it so strange that I feel so warm all of a sudden." She pinches her mouth tight, willing the onslaught of nonsense to stop. He gives her a strange look.

"Indeed." He pushes the jar closer to her, his eyes on her face. "This unguent will help ease the aching, as well as help with the scarring. Once a day until the pain is gone. I prefer to use it at night, as the odor is quite... unpleasant. Rub a liberal amount into your ribcage and chest. I shall supply you with more if you run out."

She picks up the jar and screws off the lid experimentally. The ointment is pristine white but is rather redolent of mothballs and old fruit. She wrinkles her nose. She wonders if this is the same stuff he uses whenever he is in pain from his... extracurricular activities. She looks up to find him looking at her, that strange look still on his face.

"Yes, my... _extracurricular activities _tend to take their physical toll once in a while."

Her eyes widen.

"I'm sorry! I didn't realize I, er, said that aloud... That was terribly intrusive of me." She holds the jar to her chest.

"Well?"

"Sir?"

"Are you waiting for me to demonstrate its application?"

His hand on her chest. Large and warm. Right between her breasts.

"_No!_ Er, I mean... no, thank you, sir, that won't be necessary. I just—I'll be going now, Harry and Ron are probably wondering where I am. Anyway... er, thanks again," she says a little hysterically, walking backwards. "They really should do something about the thermostat charms down here," she adds, before turning at the door and walking briskly back to the Gryffindor tower.

* * *

"Hey, you." Lavender perches herself on Hermione's bed and watches as she zips around their room, trying to do some last minute tidying up so the house-elves won't have to do everything.

"Oh hi, Lavender. I'm sorry I've been so spare lately, I know you've been wanting to talk. I've had loads of prefect duties now that term's almost done, and I've been trying to catch up on my knitting and packing—"

"Hermione. I know you've given up on knitting since the D.A. went down. And you've been packed for ages. _Term is ending in just three weeks, Lavender, you should really start packing!_" she says in a sing-song voice.

Hermione huffs.

"Well, I'm _sorry _I reminded you to pack before it's too late, but if you're coming to me for hel—"

"Hermione, I'm really sorry."

"—got my _own _packing to—what?"

Lavender's tone is carries a strange solemnity that startles her. "Hermione, I didn't come up here to ask you to help me pack."

"Well, what do you want then?" Her tone is rude, but she hopes her undeniably frazzled appearance will do the explaining for her.

"I'm sorry, Hermione."

"What? Stop apologizing, you haven't done anything," she snaps.

"I'm _really _sorry," Lavender says earnestly.

"Oh, Merlin, what have you done _now_?"

"I'm sorry the D.A. didn't work out, and I'm sorry you had to go through what you did in the Ministry," she blurts out in one breath. Hermione stills at her task. Lavender continues talking. "That was you lot, wasn't it? They said the Death Eaters broke into the Ministry last week. That's why you were in the Hospital Wing for so long. Ron and Neville too."

"How did you—"

"I know what you think of me, but I'm not_ that _stupid, you know," she bristles.

"I didn't think..." She trails off at the skeptical look on Lavender's face. "Yeah..." she finishes lamely. She turns and busies herself with the clasp of her trunk. For a while the only sound is the tinny click-clicking of her Muggle combination lock.

"I know we aren't exactly friends, Hermione. But we can tolerate each other, can't we? You probably think that Parvati and I say nasty things about you behind your back, but we don't really. There was this one time we tried to come up with a charm for your hair, but we honestly just wanted to help you. I just—" Lavender's voice cracks. "I dunno. I feel so horrid about the whole thing... I mean, we've all been living together for five years, and all of you could have _died_," she whispers wetly. Hermione looks at her in surprise. She settles next to her on the bed, placing a tentative hand on her shoulder. She opens her mouth to speak, falters, and tries again.

"Well, we're all fine, aren't we?" _No we aren't! _the voice in her head sneers, but Sirius Black isn't her secret to tell. "You shouldn't feel so bad about it, Lavender. Any of it. Really."

"Yeah? Even about the hair charm thing?"

"I suppose so. Yeah. Fine, even about the hair charm thing. Look, I'm sorry I was so short with you. I just had all these lists to compile for next year's lessons, I had to go around and ask our Professors for a brief outline of what they plan on covering for next—"

"No one has to do that."

"I'm just a little stressed out, is what I'm trying to say," she replies patiently.

"So you're feeling alright, then?"

"Perfectly. Just... er, a tiny scar, is all, nothing to worry about."

"Alright. Are you heading to the feast?" Lavender gets to her feet and checks her face in the mirror hanging by her bed, tucking a stray strand of impossibly shiny blonde hair back behind her ear. She looks back at Hermione. Whatever it was that just occurred between then, there is no trace of it ever happening in Lavender's smile. Any solemnity that she might have betrayed earlier is carefully enfolded and placed back upon its shelf.

"Yeah, er... sorry, I can't just now. I still have this stuff to do." Hermione makes a vague gesture to indicate their room.

"You know the house-elves actually _want _to take care of it, don't you? I suppose you don't," Lavender sighs. "I guess I'll see you next fall, then."

They have their own friends, their own compartments in the Hogwarts Express. She's never missed Lavender before. She wonders if this summer will be different.

"Alright, take care, Lav."

* * *

It is a mark of how much Mr. Granger missed his daughter that he presented her with a chocolate bar upon their arrival at their home.

"Oh, did you want this?" he asks her offhandedly, dangling the chocolate bar from the corner of its wrapper with his thumb and forefinger.

"One of the boys who came in for wisdom tooth extraction, Johnny Hailsham, do you remember him? He left this on the chair. I don't know how it ended up in my pocket, actually." On his face is an expression of uncaring distaste, as if to imply that he couldn't care less if she took it and that he had been about to toss it in the bin when the idea of offering it to her occurred to him.

Hermione knows better. Neither of her parents are big fans of sugary treats and her father is about as skilled in the art of subterfuge as she is. But he seems determined not to make a big deal out of it, so she says nothing and simply smiles at him.

"Thanks, Daddy."

* * *

* Taken directly from canon.

This chapter is largely inspired by a scene in Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Anyone get the Hailsham reference?


	5. Five

BROCKDALE BRIDGE COLLAPSED BY DEATH EATERS  
8 MUGGLES KILLED, 32 MORE INJURED

The list is crisp clear organization in her head almost like it is one of her mental to-do lists, and she tries to think of it that way instead of a list of names of people that are now dead.

Eight Muggles, one of them a two-year-old. A total of eleven casualties. Eight Muggles on their way to visit relatives, to pick up the dry cleaning, or maybe to take their little son to see the tigers at the zoo. But instead their cars plunged into the river below, and there they sat clutching frantic and weeping as their lungs filled with water.

* * *

When does childhood end?

Is it when a boy almost loses his father and he tries to make jokes about it because he is young and afraid?

Is it when a buck-toothed girl barely five feet tall first discovers the contention contained in her veins and how even magic cannot stop people from finding something to hate?

Is it when a baby's parents are murdered before his unperceiving eyes and his burden is branded indelibly into his forehead?

It's a strange thing to think about. She is sitting in her mother's kitchen working on her fried eggs and toast. The sunlight is filtering in lopsided shafts through a flowery yellow valance, and the scent of coffee permeates the room. It is the least fitting place to imagine that there are such things as dark lords, and Death Eaters, and prophecies.

Hermione likes things that fit.

She takes a sip of coffee, wincing as the too-sweet bitterness touches her tongue. She put too much sugar.

She has this memory of her dad getting up earlier than everyone else in the mornings to drink his coffee and read the paper in the golden blush of the crack of day. In her head, the memory looks like an old photograph, all blurry and over-exposed. She remembers thinking that he looked very grave and important, almost like he was partaking in some secret morning ritual that children weren't allowed to join. She doesn't remember how old she was; she must have been rather young, because her dad didn't let her drink coffee then. She begged and begged and eventually he caved to his only child. She cackled with delight and tried not to gag. For months afterward she pretended to like it. Somehow, back then, she got it into her head that the true mark of adulthood is being able to tolerate the taste of coffee without grimacing.

She gets up to dump her mug in the sink.

She always had this feeling that it was going to be Harry at the end of it all. He hadn't mentioned anything about the prophecy, but she reckons it contains something about him being the only person who can kill Voldemort. Or something that brings the whole cycle of bloodshed into a neat little circle like that. She likes to think that all things come full circle, even war. Circles are good. Circles make sense.

She wishes they had more time.

She rubs unconsciously at the pink but fading scar at her left shoulder. It's now healed to a slightly loose stretch of skin three shades paler than her chest like a run in a silk stocking.

It is strange to think of things like fate and destiny. She is one of those people who think that predetermination has no place in a universe birthed from tumult. That the great cosmic fugue is ultimately indifferent to their little human problems. But she knows that she is young, and she knows that she's been wrong before. Still, it is strange to think that they are descended from the stars, that somewhere in the universe billions of years ago, those burning titans perished for them to live. And yet, they are all still bound to unseen strings held by an unseen hand.

Inextricably.

Hopelessly.

When does childhood end?

When does war begin?

Is it when a group of kids realise that there is a world of difference between the flickering of spells in the Room of Requirement and the flickering that glints on the sweat on your friends' faces as you pray for one more (_please, just one more_) breath?

Is it when a bushy-haired girl (who's outgrown the buck teeth but is still just over five feet and three inches tall) learns that maybe being together just isn't enough, that strength isn't enough, that bravery isn't enough, because war isn't just a word anymore?

* * *

Emmeline Vance is a thin face she once saw flitting in and out of Grimmauld Place. She is a spare broom in the Advance Guard of the Order of the Phoenix. She is the twelfth casualty. She is three minutes on Muggle primetime television.

"—a breakdown of law and order in the Prime Minister's backyard—"*

The news anchor's features are arranged into a rehearsed sort of gravity, her tones measured low and clipped. Commiserating.

An unidentified woman. She lived alone. She was discovered by the landlord when the people who lived in the flat below hers complained about something glutinous and black and foul drip-drip-dripping to their floor from the ceiling. Her flat had been thoroughly ransacked and vandalised, though no one in the complex heard or saw anything suspicious. The police suspect a bunch of hoodlums who got lucky. She had been found bloated and eviscerated (Entrail-Expelling Curse), though the actual cause of death has yet to be discovered (Avada Kedavra).

But then the anchor moves on to the final feature of the five o'clock news (Walburga the Wiggling Chinchilla turns two years old!) and her scintillating smile wipes away all memory of murder.

* * *

The new Minister of Magic has an air of grizzled resilience to him, like an old soldier called back into service. He looks like someone who knows just what to do in any situation, someone who could make decisions and see to it that they are enforced. The Wizarding World had collectively turned a blind eye to the evidence of Voldemort's return, and yet clamored for someone to blame once the Ministry finally acknowledged what they all fervently denied.

And so Cornelius Fudge was sacked. He was just as afraid as the rest of them, but Fudge made the mistake of letting it dominate his choices. She wonders if the new Minister is afraid. If he is, there is no trace of it in the stern lines scored at the corners of his eyes and around his unsmiling mouth.

* * *

"What's happened, darling?" her mum asks, peering over her shoulder at the _Daily Prophet_.

"Oh, there's been another murder. The Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Amelia Bones. She was also a member of the Wizengamot." Her voice is calm and even. There is no need for her mother to worry.

"Oh, how terrible. But surely she was a powerful woman, if she held such high positions in your government? The Wizengamot... isn't that what you call your court?"

"Sort of, it's kind of like a form of parliament. It says here that she put up a good fight."

Her mother clicks her tongue and shakes her head. "Horrible, horrible," she mutters.

"Yeah..."

There is an auburn-haired girl named Susan Bones in Hufflepuff. Crabbe and Goyle used to give her trouble in third year, for what, she Hermione never found out. She wonders if she is related to Amelia Bones, and if so, if Susan is coming back to Hogwarts.

Amelia Bones is an empty seat in a lofty courtroom. She is a position to be filled in the Ministry of Magic. She is the thirteenth casualty.

* * *

_Saltpetre, also known in the Muggle world as potassium nitrate, occurs naturally as a mineral niter and is used in the manufacture of explosive devices, as well as an ingredient in Polyjuice Potion. The earliest known complete purification process was outlined in the year 1270 by the renowned Potions Master, Hassan al-Rammah of Syria. Known as an imperial engineer and chemist, al-Rammah published his findings in the book entitled—_

She pulls at a wisp of hair falling into her eye. She can recite this paragraph in its entirety by memory, having read the same lines over and over for the past three quarters of an hour. She glances up at the clock ticking away on the wall to her right. It is a tacky, yellow and lime-green painted cuckoo-clock that her dad purchased at a secondhand shop during a trip to Somerset. Her mum tried to get rid of it at every opportunity, but her dad always retrieved it from wherever she had hidden it, and it is always back on the wall by the next morning. She sighs irritably. It is seven thirty, only two minutes since she last checked the time, though it felt to her like twenty.

Funny (ha-ha, not really) how time never does what you expect it to do.

She had gotten the letter two days ago. _Be ready at seven!_it had said, and she was sitting in the armchair looking out the window facing the street, with all her belongings packed, by six thirty. She had stood up every ten minutes to peek through the curtains, but the street remained quiet with that twilight serenity peculiar to suburban residential areas.

It's just like Tonks to be late.

She resists the urge to grumble as her dad, sitting on the couch opposite her, gives her a knowing look. She opens her book to the page she marked.

_Saltpetre, also known in the Muggle world as potassium nitrate, occurs naturally as a mine—_

There is a terrific crash outside, followed by frenzied feline yowling and some impressive swearing. Her dad turns in his seat to peak out the window. "What in the—"

Someone outside their front door pushes the button of their buzzer and doesn't let go. An obnoxious buzzing fills the house.

"Alright, alright! You have to let go of the button, Tonks, let go!" She leaps to her feet and opens the front door. Sure enough, Tonks is standing there, her usually bubblegum-hued hair now a dull and unimpressive brown, much like her own. The artificial light streaming from the bare bulb on their porch casts a haggard glow on her pale face. She looks at least eight years older.

"Wotcher, Hermione."

Hermione looks at Tonks' face, frowning.

"Are you alright? Did you hurt yourself out there?"

"Nah, I'm fine, just knackered is all. We've been putting in extra hours over at the Department," she says, tilting her head to one side and giving her a tired smile. Hermione doesn't quite have the heart to admonish her for her tardiness.

"Alright, then. It's good to see you. Come in while I get my stuff."

Tonks follows her inside, closing the door behind her. After introductions on Hermione's part and sheepish apologies for the noise from Tonks, they are ready to depart. Her mother and father look every part the anxious parents, her mum's eyes shining with suppressed tears and her dad clearing his throat loudly every two seconds. She is sorry to leave them after such a short time but she tries and fails to quell the fluttering eagerness in her stomach at the thought of returning to the magical world and seeing her friends. The hideous clock ticks down the seconds until they are at last forced to part. Tonks vanishes her belongings to the Burrow, Crookshanks' caterwaul hanging in the air after he and his cage both disappear. She knows that he will be sore with her for transporting him in such a manner, but a few hours of hunting garden gnomes will set him right. After stiff hugs from her dad and smoochy kisses from her mum, after last-minute advice and protracted goodbyes, they are off into the night.

The sticky heat of last year's July is replaced with a morose chill that is especially pronounced during the night. The moon is hewn into a cold white sickle suspended in fathomless blue. She remembers her dad telling her that the moon's surface has a reflectivity similar to that of charcoal, and the only reason it appears so bright is due to its relative proximity to the Earth and the intensity of the light it steals from the sun. It's all a matter of perspective, really. She shares this tidbit of information with Tonks, whose only response is an automatic nod.

Hermione bites her lip, determined not to be nosy. As always, it doesn't work.

"Tonks. Tonks. Are you sure you're alright? You look a bit... er, peaky," she prods.

"Hmm? Yeah, yeah, nice of you to worry, Hermione. But really, I'm just very tired." She bares her teeth in a wide yawn and stretches her arms above her head as if to prove her point.

"As long as you're sure..."

They walk in silence. Now and then the sound of a muffled television program leaks out from dimly lit living rooms and into the night air. She hears Coca Cola commercials and bits of a soap opera, people with their faces too close to their mirrors, brushing their shiny white teeth with the even edges and marveling at the feel of _ninety-nine-point-nine-percent-less-germs!_like their sanity depends on it. She imagines light from the cathode-ray tubes flickering in the faces of people home from the nine to five workday, dazzling the apathy out of their tired limbs.

She supposes they are going to Apparate with her going along by Side-Along. She has never tried it before. She wonders what it will feel like.

"Just make sure if you're ever gonna go for a bloke, don't go for the older ones," Tonks blurts out.

She isn't aware of her feet digging themselves into the pavement.

"_What_?" she asks, alarmed. She furrows her brows, trying to think of what could possibly have brought on this sudden statement.

_Surely _she couldn't mean...

She is fully aware that he saved her life (_handonmychest—breathonmymouth_) and yes, she is grateful. Very, very grateful. In fact, she managed to work herself up into a right state of '_gratefulness_' all throughout the summer, whenever she recalled his eyes breaking, blowing, burning into her own.

But she doesn't - she wouldn't! No one ever said _anything_ about _anyone_ going for _anyone._

Tonks looks back at her with a sad smile.

"Nothing, nothing. Forget I said it. Come on, the Apparation point should be close."

She feels a little silly. There is no way that Tonks could possibly have meant what she thought, which only means that she had been referring to something completely different.

"Tonks... are _you _going for an older man?" she asks before she can stop herself. The frown on Tonks' face redoubles, and there is a faint tremor in her lower lip. Hermione grimaces.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't pry. You don't have to tell me."

"'S okay, Hermione. I reckon I'm pretty transparent, aren't I? Don't worry about me though, we've got much more important things to think about these days."

Hermione doesn't say anything, feeling awfully tactless and wrong-footed.

"Ah, here we are. Have you tried Side-Along before?" Her voice has that chipper quality that it always has, though it sounds so obviously forced that Hermione can't help but wonder which older man had reduced Tonks to this sorry state.

"No, never." She manages to keep the nerves out of her voice. It shouldn't be too bad. One second, half a second is all it will take.

"Here, grab hold of my arm. I'm gonna—not so tight, Hermione—I'm gonna count to three and we're off, yeah?"

"Okay." No, it won't be bad at all.

Tonks laughs. "It's not gonna hurt, it's just a little disorientating. Kind of like... er... oh! It's kind of like being shoved through a really tiny tube. If you feel your eyeballs bulging out of their sockets, that's perfectly normal. We can pop them back in when—I'm kidding, _kidding_! Get back over here! Alright, ready? Ease up on the grip, or we'll both be splinched. Okay, one... two... _three_!"

* * *

It's a subtle thing, but having known him for five years, it's quite evident to her. He's lost that tightness of last summer, that drawn hushed tension that built up inside of him and sparked like static whenever someone got too close. The brusque tones and sharp, jerky movements, that tendency to yell at the slightest provocation, and then fall silent for hours afterward. It might still be inside of him; he doesn't show it anymore, at any rate. She wonders if this is what happens when you find out that there are such things as dusty glass orbs harboring the entirety of your future within their sooty depths. She likes to think it's given him a sort of quiet dignity, though knowing Harry, he probably doesn't have the faintest idea what to think. He's a Gryffindor though, and like the rest of them he holds a special contempt for those who openly display their fear.

He's a little taller, a little broader. Even the way he pushes his glasses further up his nose looks different to her.

Later, so many years later, they will laugh about the days when Harry was an angsty, misunderstood teenager, and he will glare at them over his pint of mead, his face red, his eyes glassy. He will try to affect indignation, but they will poke and prod him until he too remembers that the war took so much (_too much_) from them, and it's good to laugh about things once in awhile.

Right at this moment, it isn't funny. Right at this moment, they are too far into it, and they're all feeling a bit shell-shocked. Harry, especially. There is this flightiness in him whenever the conversation moves close to Sirius. He would drop things and clatter around, trying to make as much noise as possible, then apologize and mention something completely unrelated. She hasn't heard him mention his name since that night in the Ministry.

He's stopped being angry, but now that he doesn't have that, there are times when he would just look so lost. Like he isn't sure if he's still at the Hospital Wing or something, wasted on potion-sleep. She isn't sure if this is better.

* * *

It's bad enough standing here feeling her stomach muscles tighten and that anxiety crawling through her body. But it is a million times better now than how it was a month ago when she just didn't _know_.

She has to _know_.

She has to know_ now_.

Harry and Ron stand on either side of her as they watch the three owls get closer and closer.

This is it.

This is the result of all those hours of sleep lost, all those pieces of parchment crammed with notes stuffed in between the pages of her books, all that reading and rereading and revising and reading again until she could just die of the amount of information in her head.

No one speaks as they watch Mrs. Weasley open the window and usher the birds inside. They settle on the dinner table. The letter addressed to her is tied to the leg of the owl on the very right. It gives her a wary look as she approaches with trembling fingers.

The sloshing in her stomach is almost as bad as it was the morning of the O.W.L.s.

She scans her letter. There is silence as they all peruse what amounted to a summary of five years' worth of academic achievement. Behind her Harry and Ron swap results and compare scores, Ron whistling at something impressive on Harry's.

"Hermione?"* Ginny touches her shoulder. "How did you do?"*

She is vaguely aware of mumbling something in response. Ron strides over and snatches her results from her hand. She makes a feeble attempt to get it back.

"Yep—nine 'Outstandings' and one "Exceeds Expectations' at Defense Against the Dark Arts." * He glances down at her disbelievingly, a touch of awe on his face. "You're actually disappointed, aren't you?" *

She opens her mouth to say something scathing. She had been aiming for ten Outstandings. She had a goal, she had a plan of attack, and she carried through. _Of course I'm bloody disappointed, is that so wrong?_

But then Harry laughs at her and elbows her side playfully. She pretends to swoon, one hand held to her forehead and the other crumpled in a fist and shaken with great pathos at the unfeeling sky.

* * *

_Neither can live while the other survives. *_

It sounds like something out of a myth. Like something that ought to be written on a great stone thrown to the bottom of an enchanted lake, or something etched into the hilt of a sword. But coming from her lips it is nothing but pedestrian waffle. She never did have a penchant for drama.

His whole life is preparation for one moment. There is a real pain there, and perhaps a touch of wonder. Even the way he grew up; an orphan neglected by his only remaining family, a life of alternating fame and infamy, and all that hair-raising, heart-thudding danger that follows him wherever he goes. There is a real sense of something preordained and almost Shakespearean, a sense that the universe hangs over them like a great, big, sullen sky.

The Chosen One, they call him.

But Hermione is the sort of person that decides to believe in a world of action and equal and opposite reaction, in the power of choice. _They're just words_, she wants to tell him. She wants to clasp his hands and look into his eyes and make him understand that _they're just words, and they can't do anything to us_. But she doesn't know how to say this without sounding like she isn't taking him seriously.

* * *

Igor Karkaroff is a withered body in a shack up north, nothing but the Dark Mark to stand above his grave. Florean Fortescue is an empty spot in Diagon Alley, tables overturned, sticky puddles of melted ice cream left to crust up the floors. Ollivander is a faint memory of trembling hands and a startlingly piercing voice, no trace of struggle in the shop she last visited five years ago.

But today is Harry's birthday so she makes herself forget their names for two hours. She forgets that eating more than a tiny bit of birthday cake makes her nauseous and she lets Mrs. Weasley tip two fat slices onto her plate. She forgets that there is too much maudlin already in the air and almost breaks into tears as she gives Harry a hug. She forgets that Ron is a clumsy wart and pulls him to his feet to dance to the warbling Celestina Warbeck tune on the Wizarding Wireless.

* * *

"He showed Borgin something we couldn't see," * Harry insists, pointing at his left arm with his index finger. "Something that seriously scared Borgin. It was the Mark, I know it—he was showing Borgin who he was dealing with, you saw how seriously Borgin took him!" *

His accusation hangs in the air between them. She exchanges an anxious look with Ron.

"I'm not sure, Harry..." * she says with gentle discouragement in her tone.

"Yeah, I still don't reckon You-Know-Who would let Malfoy join..." * Ron adds apologetically.

"Yeah. Fine. Alright," Harry mutters. He gets to his feet suddenly and bends to pick up his dirty laundry before slamming the door shut behind him. For a while the only sound is the rustling of Ron's broom as he attempts to straighten out the bent twigs in its tail.

"Malfoy may be the nastiest piece of shit that ever was, but even I don't think he's cut out for that sort of stuff," Ron says, a mixture of disgust and amusement on his face. She laughs weakly in reply, shifting guiltily on her perch on top of one of Fred and George's boxes of stuff.

The truth is, she had thought the exact same thing Harry did when they saw Malfoy at Borgin and Burkes. She had seen that hardness in Malfoy's gunmetal eyes and she just _knew_, somehow, that he's taken things further this time, that he too had been pushed into the ditch along with the rest of them and he too tried to make the best of what he's been given. He'd been examining something in a glass case that cast a lurid glow on his face and in that one second he'd looked exactly like his father. She could only see the slope of his cheekbone, had only caught a glance of his eye. But it had been a Death Eater standing there and not Draco Malfoy.

Then he turned his head and she saw more of his pointy face, the self-satisfied mouth. He's _sixteen_ for goodness' sake. Sixteen is only five years older than a first year. Only nine years older than someone learning fractions. Only fourteen years out of diapers. _Only sixteen_.

When Harry had started mentioning the idea she'd already convinced herself that it was an unlikely situation. Death Eaters are people that have no compunctions about collapsing a bridge that had over fifty cars on it and causing the death of eight people as simply as waving their wands and saying the spell. There is something very powerful in accusing someone, even someone like Draco Malfoy, of being capable of murder. Draco Malfoy is a slimy little bully and nothing more.

She tries to picture his pale eyes glaring at her from holes cut into glinting white, framed in a shroud of black.

The truth is, she convinces herself more for her own benefit than for Harry's. Because the fact of the matter is that this is war and they all have to choose sides sooner or later. Because there is something very final and jarring in this realisation and maybe, someplace deep and secret, she wishes they didn't have to choose. In the end it doesn't matter if you are _only sixteen_, because no one will wait for you to grow up and find your way out.

* * *

He sticks out like a sore thumb at the staff table, even with Hagrid's bulk seated just three seats to his left. It's the scowl on his face. But then it would be even more discomfiting if he actually looked like he _wants_ to be here. She wonders if he leaves the castle over the summer. She supposes he must, but she can't really picture him living anywhere else. He's doing that thing again with his finger around and around the lines of his mouth. She wonders if he owns a mask like the others, and if he does, what does it look like? She wonders if there will come a time when she will recognise unfathomable black staring at her from holes cut into that terrible glinting white.

* * *

She supposes he has a deep voice. She's never really thought about it before, and the only time it ever struck her was that night in the Entrance Hall when the night dissolved him into something mad and he said those horrible things. More notable than his voice is the way he carries himself. He is tall and slight of build, and he has this sort of wiry length to his body that implies slyness rather than raw power. He has a glare that stings like rope-burn and a way of moving that radiates relentless control and elicits the need to somehow earn his approval. For her, at least.

_Anyway._ The _point_is, she's never really thought about his voice before.

Today is different. Today is their first lesson in Defense Against the Dark Arts, and he is striding around the perimeter of their classroom. He is speaking in a low tone. Everyone, including her, cranes their necks to watch him. He used to employ this same strategy in Potions. The lower he spoke, the more they paid attention.

But he never spoke about potions the way he is now speaking about the Dark Arts. Forming each word carefully. Hollowing his throat to the shapes of the sounds.

He taps his tongue against the curb of his incisors for the hard consonants, presses it against the roof of his mouth to roll the gentler sounds, stiffens it to push out the air that forms the soft _ssss_ and the quiet _tthhh _sounds from between his teeth. Like each word resonates to some secret carnal joy.

So yes, she supposes he has a deep voice.

Lots of people have deep voices. It's certainly nothing to fuss over.

He is in the back of the room now, and a crick has developed in her neck. She doesn't like hearing his voice without knowing what he is looking at. It makes her uneasy.

"Many, varied, ever-changing and eternal,"* he says. "Like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before." *

She wonders if it is possible to love and hate something in equal measure. His affinity for the Dark Arts isn't a secret in Hogwarts, but still it is difficult for her to imagine someone like him being held enthralled by _anything_. It's that rope-burn glare of his, she thinks, and that cold control. But judging by his reverent tone, he obviously isn't as impassive as he lets on. He points to the pictures on his wall, pictures of injuries almost comical in their gore, and she wonders if this is the sort of thing that makes his pulse race. In her head he is looking down at her, her blood dripping from his face and his lips moving rapidly around an enchantment that saved her life. She wonders if this is just one of the parts he plays, or if this really is what drew him to Voldemort in the first place. She wonders how Professor Dumbledore found something for his trust to latch onto in a man whose inclinations fall in such dark places.

She shakes her head to rid herself of treacherous thoughts and reminds herself that what matters is that Professor Dumbledore _did_find something there, and if they could trust anyone, they ought to trust in the headmaster.

Later, Professor Snape introduces them to nonverbal magic. She gets it right within the first ten minutes like she always does, but she knows that even if he would save her life in a heartbeat, he would never voluntarily award her House points.

* * *

"Did you know, the Milky Way is set on a collision course for Andromeda? I just read it here." She holds up her dad's battered copy of Space and Time: The Milky Way's Role in the Great Cosmic Web.

Ron barely looks up at her from his spot on the floor surrounded by parchment. "That's fascinating, Hermione."

She stares at him sternly until he caves. "Alright, alright!" He turns to face her fully, plastering a look of yearning onto his face. "_Please_ Hermione won't you _please_ tell us about the impending demise of our galaxy. And don't forget to add all the _extensive_ and yet absolutely _riveting_ details you can think of. _All. Of. Them._"

"Fine, you philistine arse. I guess _you'll _never know." She sniffs and reaches over to crumble the crisp he is holding in her fist. It disintegrates all over the parchment in his lap. She ignores the injured look he gives her and leans toward Harry, brushing her hand off her trousers. "Harry, did you know that the Milky Way is set on a collision course for Andromeda?"

Harry laughs. "Why, I don't believe I did, Hermione. Won't you kindly tell me about it?"

"Oh, come on. I thought I could _trust _you, Harry!" Ron whines, pointing his quill accusingly at Harry. Harry shrugs. She smiles at him.

"It's not gonna happen for another four billion years, and even when it does happen the chances of two stars colliding is negligible because of the huge distances between each pair of stars. It says here that there won't really be any adverse effects for our solar system. We might be flung off into a different galaxy, but we won't feel a thing."

"Hmm. So what's so remarkable about it, then?" Harry asks.

She folds herself more firmly into her seat. The Burrow is almost a second home to her, but still it doesn't compare to the Gryffindor common room. It's taken them five years to establish their unquestioned right to the most comfortable nook by the fireplace. Five years, and the fact that Harry Potter is the Saviour of the Wizarding World. There are a few benefits to all that piffle that the Daily Prophet is feeding the public.

"Doesn't it strike you two at all?" she grouses. "Here are these two gigantic galaxies each containing hundreds of billions of stars, two and a half billion light years from each other—" she holds her fists up as far apart as they will go—"and they're hurtling toward each other at a speed of a hundred and ten kilometers per second as a result of their mutual gravity." She collides her fists together with a smack. She pauses, eyes wide, to let the impact of it sink in.

"But you said so yourself, it's going to take another four billion years. We'll all be dead. Anyone who ever knew our names will be dead, so why does it matter?" Ron pipes up, his tone sulky.

To her surprise, it is Harry that answers him.

"Yeah... no, I think it's cool. Well, not cool, I mean it's a terrifying thought, the idea that we only have so much time. I reckon four billion years is a crap load of time, but it's still finite, you know?"

"But Hermione just said that it won't affect our solar system at all," Ron persists.

"That's exactly the thing, Ron," she says, tapping her knuckle against her chin as she tries to word her thoughts. "We don't ever think about it, but we're part of these _massive_ structures. You try to picture things at that scale and it just doesn't work because our brains aren't equipped to comprehend things beyond our own frames of reference. Everything's just so... violent and chaotic at that scale. Just think about it. Here we are, in the middle of a war about _blood_, of all things, and the heavens could be realigning themselves and we wouldn't even realise it."

A thoughtful silence pervades the atmosphere. Crookshanks toddles along and hops into her lap, rubbing his face into her stomach.

"You don't have to come with me," Harry blurts out suddenly.

One second.

Five.

Seven.

And she says something, because someone has to.

"What? Come with you where, Harry?" she asks, laughing nervously, despite the inkling that's always been there that she knows _exactly _what he's on about. The crackling in the fireplace is suddenly too loud, too insistent. Harry sets his quill down and rubs the back of his neck.

They were just fine five minutes ago, but now there it is again, that uncomfortable feeling of running blindly away from something. Of yanking at each other's sleeves so that they wouldn't have to see things, to admit to things. She likes to think that they are the sort of friends that are so close that words aren't even necessary, but she knows it isn't that. She knows that they feel it too. Ron's hand goes still above his essay.

"I know you think we're in this together, but you don't have to come with me. To wherever it is that I'm supposed to go, to do whatever it is that I have to do. Neither of you. In fact, I don't want you two there." The look in his eyes is brittle like broken crystal, honest like the glaring white lights in a hospital. There is something in it that makes her want to reach for him. And she almost does, before she remembers that Harry is touchy and he shies away from things like that. When he speaks again, it sounds like a whispered confession.

"I almost... I almost got you two _killed_. You—I—it was my fault. You were right, Hermione. I should have listened to you." He stares at her until she looks away.

"What did you call it? A saving-people-thing," he laughs drily. "I—it was because of me that he... that Sirius..." His voice cracks.

"No, Harry, no, it's not you, Harry, no..." she is saying lamely, over and over, rubbing the page of her book between her thumb and forefinger.

"Don't," he says fiercely. "Don't say—I know the truth, Hermione. I _have_ to know the truth, because it's _me_, don't you see? In the end it's me and him and I _have_ to remember that things happen—that people _die_—if I screw up—"

"Stop being such a twat, mate." And for once in her life she is grateful for Ron's bluntness. Sometimes Ron knows just what it takes. "It isn't just your war. Hermione's a Muggleborn and my entire family is full of blood traitors. They would string us up by our guts even if we weren't your friends. They would have done the same to Sirius even if he wasn't at all connected to you, and he knew that. He didn't die because of you, and he definitely didn't die for you to start talking like a self-absorbed prat."

Harry's face grows red and angry and he starts to say something but Ron cuts him off again.

"You-Know-Who's just one part of it. The prophecy's just one part of it. And we're not here just because we're your best mates, but you know we would do whatever it takes to get you to wherever it is you've got to go."

Harry sputters, looking thoroughly offended and moved at the same time.

Ron looks at her as if waiting for her to say something. She puts her book down and places her hand on Harry's arm and she doesn't care if he's touchy, she doesn't care if they all pull each other past the line they've been avoiding for so long, she doesn't care if he knows that she would go with him, that she would track him down if he tried to leave her, that she would keep him alive to the best of her ability if it were the only thing she could do for him. Because in the end it doesn't matter that they are _only sixteen_. In the end they have to choose.

"They're just words, Harry," she says gently. "They're just words, and they can't do anything to us."

Harry looks at her then. To her embarrassment, it appears for the barest of seconds that his eyes have acquired a watery sheen, and she looks down at Crookshanks in her lap. When she looks back at him his eyes are as steady as ever . He swallows, then nods. He pulls his essay back to himself and starts scribbling furiously, trying very hard to look absorbed in his work. She smiles and picks up her book.

There is a sense of leaving something behind them, the same feeling she gets when her eyes pass the last word on the last page of a book she dearly loves. But the frenzied wind is beating on the other side of the castle walls, and there are always more books to read.

* * *

"Filthy Mudblood."

She whips her wand out of her pocket and whirls around to stare into the alcove. It is Draco Malfoy. He saunters out of the darkness, Pansy Parkinson clinging to his shirt tail behind him. Parkinson looks her from head to toe and titters into her hand. And she sighs and pockets her wand because four days into the start of term and this thing they do is getting so _old_.

"Out for some exercise, Granger? We heard your thighs chafing and thought it was you."

"Oh, a fat joke! How very inventive, Malfoy, well done!" she says slowly and encouragingly, like talking to a toddler. "What are you two doing here? It's after hours."

"Wouldn't you like to know, Granger," Parkinson smirks at her. "Draco here's just had his tongue in my cunt against the wall over there." She reaches up to smooth his hair before turning a sickening smile in Hermione's direction, her lips glistening. She notices too late that his hair is mussed, their lips are swollen, and there is a heady sort of musk tinging the air around them. She is thankful that they can't see the red in her cheeks. She tries not to think about where Parkinson's lips could have been.

"Yes, Parkinson, I think we all know about your penchant for faces in your _cunt_," she retorts, working her throat around the vulgarity she utters, trying not to sound like it makes her squirm.

Yeah, that filthy Mudblood Hermione Granger? A real upstart, that one. Just look at her talk with her filthy Mudblood mouth.

Parkinson's face sours.

Hermione braces her hands on her hips. "It's after hours, so I'm sure you can take your _activities _elsewhe—"

"Piss off, Granger. Hasn't Weasley managed to fuck that stick out of your arse yet?" Malfoy sneers. Then his expression turns wicked, his tone mockingly conspiratorial. "I'm sorry, does it... _work_ the same way for Mudbloods? I mean, I've never seen one, you know, _naked_. Do you have scales on your back, Granger? Rotting grot oozing out of your crack? Cockroaches crawling out of your—"

Her back stiffens as she realises what he's alluding to. "Shut up, Malfoy. You're not a prefect anymore. All I need to do is pass word to Professor McGonagall and—"

"Are you gonna tell on me, Granger? Are you gonna run crying to your Professor and tell her the mean Slytherin said things about the insects in your moldering Mudblood twa—"

"No," she says, ice spearing its way through her veins. "I'm going to tell her that you're a Death Eater."

Pansy gasps. Malfoy's face contorts into something ugly and reprehensible, a vein in his temple throbbing purple against his pale skin. He draws himself up and pulls out his wand, but she is just as angry as he is and he's never scared her before.

"Oh? Where's your fucking proof?" he says quietly.

She gets that tingle in the base of her spine that tells her that she is about to take things further than they need to be taken, but she is fuming and there is something about Slytherins that brings out the brazenness in her.

"I don't need proof, you pathetic piece of shit. You _worthless _bully. You know as well as everyone how all you lot turn out."

He takes a step toward her. She stands her ground and shoves her hand in her pocket, closing her fingers around her wand.

"Yeah? Better than the rest of us, aren't you, you jumped-up little Mudblood swot? You think you're so _fucking _clever—"

"Does it bother you, Malfoy? Is it _killing_ you inside, knowing exactly how _fucking _clever I am, knowing that a jumped-up little Mudblood swot is so much better than you at everything that supposedly runs in your bloo—"

He casts a spell that singes the top of her head. "Draco, Draco..." Parkinson whispers behind him, pulling at his sleeve. Hermione pulls out her wand and shoves him backward, driving the heels of her hands into his chest. He stumbles into Parkinson, who emits a little squeal and tumbles to the ground. To his credit, Malfoy pulls the other girl back to her feet before pinning Hermione with a murderous glare. Slytherins really do look out for each other, she thinks.

"Don't fucking touch me, you putrid mutt!" he yells, making a show of brushing off his robes where she touched him. And it _hurts _just a little bit, knowing that no matter how confident she is in herself, her touch will always be akin to the stench of offal to others. That she is rubbish, swill, slop in a world she has fallen in love with. But she swallows the hurt and reminds herself who she is (not weak) and she smiles.

"Potter and Weasley aren't here to save you."

"I don't need them when it comes to dealing with _you_, as I'm sure you remember. You are _nothing_. Nothing but a scared little boy who'll end up in Azkaban just like his _coward _of a fathe—"

He slams his elbow into her throat and shoves her against the wall. Pansy screams from somewhere behind him. The force of it knocks the air out of her and leaves her gasping with the cold wall cutting bruises into her back. He points his wand into her face, the glowing tip of it two inches from her left eye. Her eyes cross as she tries to focus on it. When he speaks, his spittle flies into her face.

"_You—you fucking_—" he grounds out, his face a boiling red. Behind him Parkinson is crying, "You can't, you can't, Draco."

"Get. Off. Me."

Anger burnishes her voice and leaves it burning and low. She barely registers that her wand is no longer in her hand. The air between their faces is thick with something ancient, toxic. Invisible like a slap of carbon monoxide. She gouges her fingernails into his arm through his sleeve, but he doesn't even notice. She jerks her knee upward. He sees what she intends to do, and twists his body away. His arm digs deeper into her throat, and something convulsive and involuntary grabs hold of her windpipe, her vision brightening around the borders. Her knee hits nothing but air. He sneers at her triumphantly and opens his mouth to pronounce an incantation, but before he can get it out she balls her hand into a fist and punches it as hard as she can into his stomach, feeling it cave beneath her knuckles.

"_Guh_," he grunts, doubling over and wheezing.

She starts sucking great gulps of air into her lungs like a madwoman but just as the oxygen floods the warning bells in her head his hand shoots up and grabs a chunk of hair and yanks down-down-down and she crashes to the floor.

She goes still for two seconds. A long, drawn hiss escapes from between her gasping lips, and she cradles her crushed elbow, her eyes tearing, her scalp smarting. She feels as if all the bones in her right side have splintered, bits and shards embedding in muscle. She wills the pain to recede into a ball and go away. From the corner of her eye she sees Parkinson standing terrified and immobile, her face utterly childlike in the darkness.

Malfoy is staring at her with a hatred so potent she can _taste _it, and it is unctuous and metallic. He levels his wand at her forehead.

"Petrificus Tot—"

Sometimes, when she isn't thinking too much, she can surprise herself with her own quickness.

She lunges forward, her bruised elbow cracking, and wraps her hands around his ankles. She savors the look of undisguised bewilderment on his face, the same one she saw before her fist connected with his nose in third year, and she tugs hard and he tumbles in a flurry of blonde hair and flailing limbs. He lands flat on his back. No one, not even a boy with refinement bred a million and one generations into his bloodline, can look graceful under the strain of gravity. She wastes no time scrabbling around on the floor and crows with delight as her fingertips feel smooth, polished wood.

She pushes herself to her feet, unable to prevent the groan of pain at the jolt in her side. She whirls around to find Malfoy on his knees before her, his wand trained on her heart. She points hers at his face, trying to decide on a spell. She can make his skin erupt in angry boils. She can charm his tongue to swell up to monstrous proportions. She can turn his hair _pink _and it would last for weeks.

She remembers the Sorting Feast, Harry entering through the double doors with blood smeared and clotted all over his face, trying and failing to disappear into the noise. She wants to break Malfoy's nose. She wants to Petrify him and stomp on his face, but she knows that even with her pulse hot and wild she wouldn't stoop that low.

"Try anything. Go ahead and try _anything _and I'll ruin your pretty face, Malfoy," she croaks through her abused throat.

Later, when she is sitting in the Hospital Wing being reprimanded by Madam Pomfrey, she will think back on her words and she will be shocked at the vehemence that laced her tone. But right at this moment she wants nothing more than an excuse to hear the crunch of bone and the moan of pain and to see the flow of red streaming from his nostrils.

"I wouldn't be so cocky, Granger," he says, his chest heaving. He flashes her a smile that makes her sick, that makes her remember that very same brand of silver bigotry leering at her from behind a white mask. She doesn't know if she is just imagining the shadow beneath his sleeve on his left arm. She tightens her grip on her wand, and her eyes widen in surprise when he opens his mouth.

"Crucio—"

"Protego!"

She feels the force of the shield charm crackle on her skin and she lands with a thud on her bottom.

Parkinson is still standing frozen, her wand nowhere in sight, her eyes trained in terror at something just over her shoulder. Hermione looks around. Had she perhaps performed involuntary magic to protect herself?

The answer comes to her in the form of a voice behind her, like a cube of ice running down her spine.

"Duelling in the corridors, I see."

She dares to glance behind her. To her astonishment, his glare is aimed not at her, but at Malfoy. She looks back at the other boy. He, too, is sitting on the ground, his face pale and shining with sweat. He returns Professor Snape's glare with equal malice.

Strange.

She always thought that they respected each other. _Liked_, even. But now they are giving each other such belligerent looks that she almost expects to see Harry standing in their shared line of vision.

"Sir, I—"

"Put that wand away and hold your tongue, Miss Granger," he says as coldly as ever, his eyes still on Malfoy. He strides closer to them, looking every part the vengeful demon risen from the deep. His robes billow magnificently in his wake, and she wonders offhandedly if he uses a charm to make them do that. She wouldn't put it past him to spend hours at a time coming up with new intimidation tactics.

He walks in front of her and stops, then shifts to his left, so that he is now standing directly between her and Malfoy. He widens his stance. She feels something jerk in her stomach, something odd and buoyant at the thought that he is protecting her, but she reminds herself that she does not need protection, not from slimy little bullies trying to cast Unforgivables.

If she were to stretch her arm she would be able to touch the back of his knee. She stares up at his shoulders from her position on the floor.

"Mr. Malfoy, would you care to explain what you are doing here after hours?"

She cranes her neck to have a look at Malfoy, who gets to his feet and gingerly puts a hand to his diaphragm.

"I'd rather not, _sir_," he spits.

"Fifteen points from Slytherin. Each. And... detention, I think, for you as well as Miss Parkinson."

As though just now remembering where she is, Parkinson gives a start and scurries over to Malfoy, attempting to wrap an arm around his waist. Malfoy bats her hand away and continues to glare at Professor Snape, shock now mingling with anger on his pointed features. Hermione is certain that the shock is mirrored in her own face. This is the first time in her life that she's seen Professor Snape livid at one of his Slytherins, the first time she's seen him take points from his own House. And detentions, too.

"Do not force my hand, Draco. I will not ask you again." His tone is stern, but there is something faintly gentle and persuasive in it.

Malfoy's gaze turns inward and for a scant second a look so achingly conflicted passes across his face. _Goodness_, had he always been that gaunt?

"We..." Malfoy swallows. "We were just... on our way to the common room. Sir," he bites out, his eyes trained somewhere around Professor Snape's feet, contriving his features into an expression of penitence. The shifty little ferret knows a thing or two about getting himself out of trouble. She wants to break his nose again.

"Good. See to it that you are there when I return."

"Yes, sir," Malfoy answers swiftly, if a little glumly. He shoots her one last dirty look, before pulling Parkinson down the corridor. She takes a savage pleasure in the fact that he has yet to remove his hand from his ribs. Their footsteps echo behind them, then they disappear altogether.

Then it is just she and her professor. She and her professor and the seconds ticking away in her head.

She starts to fidget, waiting for him to speak.

She jumps as he thrusts his hand in front of her. Had she imagined it? She couldn't have, because it smells of snow and ripe earth, of something cold and minty and very male, something inebriating. It is the same hand that he used _to press on my chest—tosavemylife—_

"Don't be rude, girl," he snaps.

"Oh, er... sorry, professor." She puts her hand in his. His hand slides past hers, palm to palm, and he closes his fingers around her wrist and pulls her up to her feet, frowning at her as she winces. His hand feels like any other hand. She doesn't know why this is a revelation to her. She had expected... what, exactly? She thought his hand would feel stiffer, perhaps. Emaciated. Colder . But he snatches his hand away before she can think about it too much.

"Come with me." He turns and goes the same way that Malfoy and Parkinson went. He gets about three meters ahead of her before she tells herself that she probably ought to start walking. She can hardly keep up with the unforgiving pace that he sets, and when they reach his office she is breathing hard and clutching at her throbbing elbow. She is glad for this, because she can concentrate on the act of getting enough air into her system instead of imagining her punishment (_Oh God my prefect badge I'm going to lose my prefect badge_). She can practically feel the questions burning under her tongue.

The door of his office opens before him. He gestures for her to precede him into the room. When she passes him, she is sure that he will notice the hairs on the back of her neck rising, the pores on her arms tightening. She bumps her shoulder on the edge of the doorway, but he doesn't say anything.

As soon as she sets foot in his office, the candles set on various surfaces sputter into life, chasing the shadows into the corners.

She hears him close the door behind her. Then he sits at his desk.

"Sit," he declares, pointing at the hard-backed chair in front of him.

She makes the error of dawdling. His eyes snap to hers. _Merlin_, he's like a shark, this one, sensing apprehension from miles away.

"Move! The rest of us don't have the privilege of entire evenings to ourselves, Miss Granger," he barks.

She plops herself into the chair. He rests his elbows on his desk and clasps his hands together under his chin. She tries very hard not to fidget.

"Explain yourself." His voice sounds like a glacier splitting in two.

"Malfoy and I got into an argument, sir."

"Yes, I gathered as much. What happened _before _that, Miss Granger?"

"I was patrolling and I saw Malfoy and Parkinson in the alcove. He—" _He called me a Mudblood_, she wants to say, but it sounds too much like tattling— "He provoked me. It was nothing out of the ordinary. But then he said..." She stares at the heart-line of her left hand, lying limp in her lap.

"You will look at me when I am speaking to you, Granger. Mr. Malfoy said what?"

She feels the blood rush to her ears. She wonders if he can hear it as loudly as she does.

"He... er... he said some things about—some very nasty things—about my... er... certain parts of my... anatomy..."

"And?" he asks with the air of someone patiently prompting a very slow child.

"And I called him a... a Death Eater. Then I said that he would end up in Azkaban like his father." She refrains from adding the coward part. She has a feeling that it will only make him angrier. "He got upset at that. Then we fought."

He inhales sharply.

"I would assume that being accused of murder, rape and torture without proof is generally upsetting to most people. I see Potter's paranoid tendencies are rubbing off on you."

"I... I shouldn't have said it, sir."

"No, you shouldn't have. Draco Malfoy is no Death Eater."

"But—" She starts to tell him about what they've seen in Knockturn Alley, but then remembers that Harry will kill her if he finds out that she told the only other person he suspects of being a Death Eater. Is it too much to hope that Professor Snape won't notice?

"But _what_?"

Apparently, it is.

"Nothing, sir. It's just that... his father was at the Department of Mysteries when (_when you saved my life_) we went after Sirius."

He gives her a long, hard look.

"Draco is not his father any more than you are."

"He was about to cast Crucio, sir," she whispers. He pinches the bridge of his nose.

"For that, he will be punished, but Mr. Malfoy's actions were those of a cornered and, may I add, _deliberately_ needled bully, and not of a slave to the dark. Need I remind you that _I _am the only Death Eater in this castle, and that you may defer to my judgement in this matter?"

"No, sir. Of course."

It's the first time she's heard the admission from his own lips, but he says it in such a manner that he might as well have said _Apparation isn't permitted within Hogwarts grounds_, or, _Lacewing flies need twenty-one days to be properly stewed_.

_I am the only Death Eater in this castle. _

Murder, torture, rape, he said. Is _he_ capable of it? Does that mean that _he_is a slave to the dark?

"Are you hurt?"

She looks up at him in surprise. He is looking straight at her and she hates it when he does that, she absolutely _hates _that it makes her want to gnaw her fingernails to the quick. She stares at his chin instead.

"Er... no, not really. Just... sore." The word brings the heat to her cheeks (_God_, Hermione). If he notices, he makes no comment on it.

"You are not forbidden to conduct your patrol after hours. Your prefect status, however, does not grant you impunity to duel in the halls. Thirty points from Gryffindor."

Well. That is to be expected. She isn't about to complain, when he'd just taken the same amount from Slytherin. Despite the fact that the amount taken from the two of them is the same as that taken from one of her, it is probably the most equitable thing he's done in all her time at Hogwarts.

"Yes, sir."

"And detention, starting tomorrow night. One can only hope that a week of sorting out rotten flobberworms should curb that rebellious streak of yours. You needn't bring your protective gloves."

She resists the urge to squirm at the thought of festering flobberworm juice under her fingernails. "Yes, sir."

She feels his eyes on her face, scrutinizing her features for reaction.

"What happened to your mouth, Miss Granger?"

"Sir?"

"The first portion of your alimentary canal that functions as a receptacle for food as well as a tool for communication. What happened to it?" he snaps irritably.

"I—I don't know—"

"Am I to understand that your gums started bleeding of their own accord?"

She runs her tongue on the inside of her cheek, flinching as her tongue passes a tear in the soft tissue.

"Oh, erm, I think I bit my cheek when Malfoy... er... yanked me to the floor."

He contemplates her in silence for one heartbeat.

(_lub-dub_)

Two.

(_lub-dub_)

Three.

(_lub-dub_)

"To the Hospital Wing with you, then. If Madam Pomfrey tells you to return to your common room, let her know that you are there under my directive and I will be most displeased if you show up in my classroom unable to answer my questions because of that cut in your mouth."

"I don't think that's necessary, sir, I—"

"_Don't_. Argue with me. As tempting the notion of never again being subjected to your priggish prating is, I will not have you spreading infection within my class. Am I clear?"

He has the faintest cleft on his chin, unnoticeable but for the way the dim candlelight nestles into the planes of his face.

"Yes, sir."

* * *

She cannot lie to save her life. Those who don't know her can tell by the little tics; the shifting of her eyes, the wringing of fingers, the worrying of her bottom lip. Those who do know her take it for granted that she is Hermione Granger, and she is quite possibly the worst liar in the world.

Lying to herself, however, is a different matter.

Harry and Ron are looking at her with reluctant envy. They've been trying and trying for the past twenty minutes to Transfigure their mice without saying a word, Harry's lips white, Ron's ears red. She tells herself she doesn't at all enjoy being the first in the class, the _only_ one in the class, who's proficient enough with nonverbal magic to earn ten points for her House. She tells herself that the little flush of pleasure that she feels is from a job well done, and not from the smile Professor McGonagall aimed her way when no one was looking. She tells herself that the reason she spent four sleepless nights practicing in the privacy of her bed is that she wants to be on top of her schoolwork, and not because she is tired of never hearing anything but disapproval from Professor Snape's thin mouth.

* * *

* Taken directly from canon.

The line 'like a slap of carbon monoxide' came to me when I was listening to the song No Surprises by Radiohead. Music and fanfiction make a delicious combination.


	6. Six

A/N: Thanks guys for all the support :) You are all beautiful people.

* * *

"Enter."

She steels herself and walks through the doorway.

"Good evening, Professor."

He is standing behind his desk, his hands sheathed in black dragonhide gloves and clasped together forbiddingly in front of him. This, along with the puritanical narrowing to his lips and the buttons trimming his throat, gives him the air of a disgruntled clergyman. He seems to have accrued some fifty more jars of specimens over the summer, despite being transferred to the Defense Against the Dark Arts position. She tries not to watch them spin and bob hypnotically in that revolting green liquid, as if buffeted by unseen waves.

The fireplace is sitting bare and forlorn. The only light in the room is the grotesque glow exuded by the specimen jars. There is a touch of the numinous, of the fractured and the sinister in the frigid dungeon air. She sucks in a loud breath and makes sure that she isn't standing pigeon-toed.

He waits for her to look at him before speaking.

"Come with me."

He stalks over to a scant bit of stone not covered in jars and pulls out his wand, performing some intricate motion with it. _Ten points from Slytherin for foolish wand-waving_. A quiet laugh escapes the confines of her lips. He looks at her sharply. She draws her bottom lip into her mouth.

"Something amusing, Miss Granger?" he sneers.

"No, sir."

He fixes her with a level stare.

"See to it that it remains so. I have no wish to be subjected to your infernal tittering for the next hour."

The room he enters is almost identical to his old Potions classroom, the one that is currently used by Professor Slughorn. Except this room is far neater; there are no spare textbooks lying about, no quills strewn across the floor, no scorch marks or stains on the tables. There is the same dank chill that pervades the entirety of the dungeons, the same greying light that gives everything it touches a look of disheartened weariness.

A vat of squirming... _something _lies in wait for her on one of the tables, the wet sounds emanating from it making her shudder.

He motions toward it.

"You may begin."

She sighs and heads toward the vat, pulling her protective gloves out of her pocket. A hand closes about her elbow.

"I believe I told you that there would be no need for gloves."

"Oh, erm, I thought (_Hoped—fervently—Oh please_) you might have been joki—"

"I do not _joke_, Miss Granger," he says, spitting out the offending word as if it were a crass oath.

"But I—"

"_No. Gloves_. If you think this beneath your dignity, I am certain that Mr. Filch would be glad for some extra help cleaning the fourth floor lavatory. I understand there's been a recent accident involving a rather powerful sticking charm and some first year unwittingly imbibing some Muggle laxative."

He looks almost gluttonous with scorn. _Jesus_, he can slice through boomslang skin with that upper lip.

"Or better yet, I'm sure Professor McGonagall would love to hear about her prized prefect duelling while carrying out patrol duties."

She cringes.

Flobberworm juice? She can be a Gryffindor about the little things, too.

Professor Snape's derision? She took it for the past five years.

But Professor McGonagall's quiet disappointment?

"No, sir. No gloves."

She makes to put them back in her pocket. He raises an eyebrow at her and lifts one gloved hand, beckoning with his fingers. She looks at him, faintly perplexed. Does he want her to come to him, or—

"Give me the gloves," he intones slowly. He talks like he is wrapping each word in its own special sneer as they move past his lips.

"Oh, er, right." She flushes. When she does as he asks, her fingers brush against supple dragonhide, the warmth from his hand captured in the leather. She tries not to mentally dissect its texture.

He stows her gloves in his pocket, and she wonders if she will ever get them back.

"This room is for my private use. I shall be brewing a potion that requires immense concentration for the next two hours. You will conquer your pathological need to speak, raise your hand, ask questions, or otherwise make a nuisance of yourself. You will complete your task in precisely one hour and leave my table pristine as you found it. You will not use magic. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"

"Brewing, sir? What poti—"

"Ten points from Gryffindor. Have you already managed to forget what I just said? I told you to keep your ever-flapping mouth _shut_, Granger," he says abrasively.

She bristles.

She was just curious.

"Yes, _sir_," she says, just barely keeping her left eyebrow from arching in defiance.

"Ten points from Gryffindor, for your... _ah_, cheek."

He points at the container of flobberworms.

"Get to work. The sooner you finish, the sooner you can get out of my sight."

He gives her one last spiteful sneer and moves to a table in the center of the room, keeping his back to her. She didn't notice the cauldron sitting on it when she entered. She wonders how she could have missed it; it is of a coruscating silver so lustrous that it seems to contain the entire room, the entire castle, within its boreal depths. It couldn't have been used before, as there isn't the tiniest scratch on its surface. Its contents cast a golden glow that creeps around his edges, backlighting his form in an auroral halo.

She is surprised that he trusts her enough to sort through a bucket of flobberworms without constant supervision. Or perhaps the potion really does require every ounce of his concentration.

She watches him as he inspects each ingredient lying ready around the cauldron. He picks up a knife and holds it up to the light, then starts chopping something, his elbows rising and falling with a nostalgic, fluid rhythm. His head is gently inclined forward, the nape of his neck barely visible between a gap in his hair and his stiff collar. The skin there is almost as white as the centimeter of linen peeking out at the neckline of his robes. Everything about him is uncannily apt, she thinks; even his appearance is a study in contrasts.

She knows that he is assiduously watching the movements of his own hands. She realises that he's always done that. There is no doubt that he can brew most potions with both eyes closed and one hand tied behind his back, but he is always so meticulous, so critical of his own actions despite his expertise.

She wonders if he has a permanent crease on his glove where the stirring rod rests against his finger. He's always held it poised just so. He doesn't use gloves all the time, though. Maybe he has a callous in that spot, right by the top joint of the middle finger on his right hand.

She's missed this.

For all his skill as an instructor in Defense, she's missed watching him brew.

His refusal to answer her question about the potion only fuels her curiosity to a slow and steady burn. It's tolerable, for now, but she knows herself enough to recognise that, if left unattended, her questions have a tendency to take over her brain.

"I thought I told you to get started, Miss Granger," he says without turning to look at her.

_Merlin_, how the hell does he do that?

She looks forlornly at the syrupy flobberworm mass waiting to be sorted. They are wriggling manically over each other, some of them trying to ooze up the walls. All of the plumper ones are pulsating and seeping a gloppy green substance that smells of dirty bandages and halitosis, with a biting tinge of ammonia. The wet, slopping sound almost proves to be her undoing. But she collects herself, knowing that gagging will probably cost her another ten points.

"Sorry, sir. Right away."

She gets her gloves back at the end of the hour.

* * *

When she is alone she sometimes finds herself mentally cataloguing the people she knows. She would think of their faces (straight nose, scar, smudgy spectacles on Harry—freckles and fair lashes on Ron—the prettiest pair of lips she's ever seen on Ginny), their names, and all the things she likes about them. She also tries to think of the things that rile her about them and make her tug on her hair and put her hands on her hips. It's an odd thing to do, she admits. But she does it anyway.

They will never forget each other, she likes to think. She knows they think this too. They don't really talk about sentimental things like that. Being best friends with two boys, she is used to taking for granted that certain things will remain unsaid between them. They can go through hell and back for each other and end up old and resentful and bitter in their orthopedic shoes, liver-spotted and incontinent and senile. But they will still remember.

Memory is a tricky thing, though. She used to have this doll when she was around three. She thinks she named it Michelle. Or Diane. Something. Anyway, she loved it tremendously, but now she can't even remember what it looked like. Or what she named it. Come to think of it, she can't remember where Michelle/Diane is; it might have been handed down to a distant cousin, or donated at a toy drive. More likely, it is sitting in that cupboard full of various unwanted objects under the stairs at her house.

Humans are rational creatures. Hermione more so than most. She likes to weigh the odds, pack an umbrella. On average, she expects things to turn out better than they wind up being. She is sixteen going on seventeen , and the solid lump between her lungs that tells her that they will be alright is still going strong.

People leave a bit more of a mark than dolls do, but one never knows, so it's better to weigh the odds. Pack an umbrella. Because growing up is killing time. Growing up is watching the people you love change. Growing up is a vanishing, and what was once overwhelming won't get lost, but it will lose its meaning. Growing up is understanding what is inevitable, and hating the inevitability, and the passivity of inevitability, and the knowing that what was once your finest rage and your most rapturous joy will be deflated and stowed away into the file boxes of history.

Where will you be when you go under? Because right now, things are getting closer to the sun. Too close for comfort.

In the end, you are nothing more than a summation of memories in someone's head. A vaguely sweet and harmless recollection of things you once did, words you once said. A term of endearment. An echo of personality. Then that person dies too, and you are nothing but a name hanging thinly in the air, the syllables all wrong and mispronounced.

Then your name, after some few years, is condemned to putrefaction as well. And it's like none of it ever happened, an entire generation sloughed off the face of the earth.

* * *

"It's bloody _weird_, is what it is. You-Know-Who's got _parents_?"

"Don't be a berk, Ron," she sniffs disdainfully. "Whatever did you expect, that he was spawned from the bowels of evil?"

He mutters something nasty under his breath.

The idea of Lord Voldemort being born in an entirely human manner unsettles her as much as it does Ron. But he's been getting on her nerves lately, strutting around and affecting a deeper voice whenever there are girls nearby, pretending not to notice them. The prat had never before said a nice thing about Lavender, but now he keeps doing this thing with his hair, trying to maintain it in a state of artful dishevelment every time she is in his immediate vicinity.

_She_, on the other hand, has taken to wearing ridiculously colorful bras under the standard prescribed white shirts. Now, these shirts are made of a material that can be quite translucent when the light hits them just so, especially when it gets too warm for robes. This shouldn't be a problem for girls like Hermione, who's bought several of the same exact type of bra in shades of nude, cream, and white. Lavender, however, seems to prefer the frothy, lacey, _itchy_ types with the flowers and the bows and the little synthetic pearls. Or rather, _Ron _seems to prefer them, and Lavender has taken full advantage of this fact.

It's just _so_...

_So_...

She _huffs _and turns to Harry, stuffing her frustration in the back of her mind.

"You said Professor Dumbledore had Marvolo Gaunt's ring?"

"Yeah, he was wearing it when we went to visit Slughorn. I reckon that's what happened to his hand; it's probably got some dark power or something... I asked him about it, but he always changes the subject." He says this a little resentfully. Oh, he's trying not to show it, but she can tell.

"Harry, I'm sure Professor Dumbledore means well. We _have _to trust him, you know that."

He nods jerkily, drawing boxes with his finger in the nap of the carpet he is sitting on.

"Anyway, I agree with you about the ring. It's definitely got something sinister in it, if it belonged to Voldemort's family. Whatever curse was inflicted on Professor Dumbledore's hand, it isn't ordinary magi—"

"So what's his mum look like?"

"Oh, would you drop it, Ron!" she snaps. Ron ignores her and gives Harry a pointed look. Harry complies.

"She was... I dunno, ordinary? She didn't look like someone who would give birth to the most evil wizard of his generation, if that's what you're really asking." Harry shrugs and pushes his glasses up his nose. Hermione finds herself listening raptly despite herself. "She was rather plain, actually. And timid. She flinched a lot, from what I saw." He attempts to pull off an insouciant quirk to his lip, like he couldn't care less about what Voldemort's parents were like. It's yet another thing they have in common; both of them orphans, both raised by people they never regarded as family. It's almost poetic.

Each of them are folded into their own silence, heads hanging loose from necks, hands hanging loose from wrists, fingers barely holding onto parchment and quill.

Merope Gaunt had been beaten into a state of sub-humanity by her father and brother. Hermione pictures in her head a wisp of a girl, dark-featured, bony knees and elbows, her rags impregnated with dust and human filth. She had been terrorised and abused, so much so that magic became a source of torment for her, instead of the wonder that it was supposed to be. All her short life, she had received nothing but contempt from those who would call her family.

She frowns.

Maybe if things were different...

Maybe if Merope Gaunt were a stronger person, and if Tom Riddle were a better man...

She pinches at the growing thread of her thought.

She doesn't _want_ to feel _anything _for Voldemort's mother.

She reminds herself that he is nothing other than evil incarnate, nothing other than a murdering psychopath who would regard her carcass with glee and set the dogs at her flesh, given the opportunity.

Thinking otherwise will ruin the circle she erected to keep things together. Because she likes to think that all things come full circle, even war. Thinking otherwise will _mangle _the circle beyond repair. It will seep into the carefully placed lines. It will cannibalise the cut-crystal-clear walls that are there to tell them they are making the right choice, and everything would start bleeding out and mixing together and making a mess.

Circles are good.

Circles make sense.

It won't do to start thinking that the little boy Tom Riddle was born seven and a half pounds of innocence just like the rest of them were.

So she swallows the lump in her throat and changes the subject.

"But... but why was Dumbledore showing you all this? What did he say the purpose of those memories are?"

"He said it's important to know about Voldemort's past. Something to do with the prophecy," Harry says slowly, shaking himself out of his reverie. "I dunno, I was hoping he was going to teach me spells or something. But I guess if he thought I should know this, then he has his reasons."

She doesn't like calling it 'The Prophecy,' as though it is some consecrated, antediluvian script binding their fates and sealing it in a flipping dictum. _The Prophecy_. Like a cheap plot device in a dodgy Muggle film.

It's belittling, she thinks, in some vague, undefined way. They have nothing else to call it, though, and she can rise above such petty concerns.

"That's all he said? Well... I suppose it makes sense, if you have to fight him. Maybe he thought it would give you insight to his weaknesses. I wonder why he would have the ring, though. Are you sure he didn't say anything else about the ring?"

"No, nothing else."

Ron has long since lost interest in the conversation, and is busy mooning at Lavender with his bloody calf-eyes sparkling like a fecking—

She shan't look. She absolutely will not look at Ron. She concentrates her eyes on the patterns Harry is etching into the carpet.

"Oh. Alright. I'm sure you're right; he probably does have his reasons for that. I mean, we aren't even official members of the Order yet. Or maybe the ring doesn't even mean anything at all. You said Merope Gaunt was wearing a locket?"

"Yeah, but Dumbledore didn't say anything about that. And it wasn't in his office like the ring was. What are you thinking?"

"No, nothing. I just thought, since they were the only things the Gaunts owned that had any value... but no, it probably doesn't mean anything."

Harry scratches at a spot on his nose. She brings a hand up to rub at her scar, but she puts it back down again when she notices Harry looking at her.

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess so."

* * *

"Oh, bugger," she whispers as a particularly fat flobberworm shoots out from between her thumb and forefinger, hitting the side of the container with a moist slap. It leaves a trail of stringy mucous as it slides down to join the lunatic writhing of its brothers and sisters.

"Five points from Gryffindor. You will keep a civil tongue in your head while I am suffering your presence, Miss Granger."

Isn't he supposed to be _concentrating _on that potion? She was going to ask him about it when she arrived for detention, but the set of his mouth changed her mind. Maybe tomorrow.

"Sorry."

She could try to figure it out, of course. Not very many potions take on a golden hue. And he has his ingredients right in front of him. Of course, it could be an entirely novel potion altogether. She's clever, but even Hermione can admit that she is no '_Half-Blood Prince_,' whatever the bloody hell that's supposed to mean. Her top lip curls with contempt.

"Sorry, _what_, Miss Granger?"

She briefly contemplates not answering just to spite him, but seven nights of plunging her hands into this stinking, wriggling mess in front of her is quite enough for a lifetime. For several lifetimes, thank you.

"Sorry, _sir_."

He doesn't speak to her for the rest of the hour.

* * *

Hannah Abbott's mother was found dead the other day.

That makes fourteen.

Hannah was pulled out of Herbology. Her usually pink face was a sickening, chalky yellow-white that blended with her blonde hair.

Hermione didn't hear until two days later that the other girl's mother was found lying stiff and contorted in their front yard. They lived in a Muggle area, so it was quite a challenge for the Department of Muggle Relations. There must have been a hefty amount of paperwork.

She wonders if the ministry officials complained about it, shuffled their feet and ground their teeth.

_Oh, bloody hell, isn't that just delightful. Another one? But I was going to meet the lads at the pub tonight._

Rifle through the two-inch stack of parchment. Go spare looking for a quill.

_Will it be Quick-Quotes tonight, or Spell-Check? Nah, I think I'll go with Self-Inking; I'm almost out of ink. Remind me to put in an order tomorrow. _

Grumble.

A sigh of resignation. Sink into the chair, the fucking chair that fucking creaks because the higher-ups keep putting off the request for a better one. Like they will most likely ignore the order for ink.

_I'd like to get my hands on the fucking wanker responsible for this_.

_Yeah, sorry, mate. Paperwork is a bitch._

She used to wonder how many lives will be so effortlessly snuffed out before it ends. How many existences will be reduced to a trifling memory—perhaps a favorite song someone once sung constantly, a pretty bauble someone once wore, a glint of light on a faintly familiar smile, or maybe even a battered pair of glasses that once perched in front of green eyes.

In this case, paperwork. Hannah Abbott's mother is another pile of paperwork for an administrative assistant somewhere in the twisting interior of the Ministry of Magic.

When does childhood end?

When does war begin?

Hannah Abbott's mother was found dead the other day.

* * *

Professor Flitwick gestures when he talks. Humongous gestures that are utterly unsuitable to his tiny frame. She thinks he does it unconsciously to make himself feel like he's taking up more space in the room than he actually does. Or maybe it's just the nature of his profession; there is quite a bit of elaborate wand-waving required to master Charms, after all. Whatever the case, it's taken them five years of being in his class to get over their habit of snorting into their hands whenever the momentum from his arms threatens to topple him over.

"—at happened to your hands?"

She is staring so blankly at Professor Flitwick that he starts to flicker and double in front of her eyes, and she has to blink twice to get things to go back to normal.

This happens often in Charms. She always masters the assignment ahead of everyone else, usually ten to fifteen minutes into the beginning of class, sometimes even before class started. So she would have nothing to do but sit in her seat and try to exude an aura of modest approachability. In truth, her classmates know her too well to approach her for help; they all know that she won't give it a rest. There was one time she followed Gladys Matthews to the Ravenclaw common room to offer her assistance in the proper execution of the Cheering Charm.

"I'm sorry Neville, what was that?" she whispers.

"I said, what happened to your hands? Sorry... it's just, you've been scratching them for the past half hour and it looks quite bad."

"Oh." She looks down at her hands lying in her lap. They have acquired a ghastly pink and scarlet blotchiness, tiny pustules blooming in the spaces between her fingers. She didn't notice that she was scratching, but now that Neville mentioned it, they _itch_ like _hell._

"Sodding flobberworms," she mutters heatedly, dragging her fingernails across the tingling flesh on the back of her hand. She sighs with relief.

"Flobberworms, you say?"

"Oh, yeah. I've managed to land myself a weeks' worth of detentions with Professor Snape. He caught me duelling with Malfoy, you see."

"Ah. I take it that's why Crabbe and Goyle have been cracking their knuckles in your direction when you aren't looking. You should watch your back," he says playfully. Neville's a shy boy, but he got over that with her a long time ago. They've been through a lot together in all those Potions classes. Or maybe it's because they're both a little awkward with people, and they sense this shared trait in one another.

"Ha, yeah, I doubt Malfoy told them about it though. I gave him a nasty one to the gut," she smiles wistfully.

"You socked him?" he asks a little incredulously. She grins.

"Excellent, Mr. Longbottom! I assume you've successfully performed a nonverbal Aguamenti Charm?"

"Er... no, sir, not really..."

"Is that so? Then please refrain from chatting with Miss Granger until you have." Professor Flitwick's sternness is of the gently chiding kind. One has to learn the hard way to take him seriously.

"Sorry, Professor," they both mutter.

"Oh, don't worry, my dear, _you _are quite safe," he says, turning to her. "I understand you've mastered the charm since last week? Admirable, as I expected. Yes, quite safe, quite safe."

She flushes and smiles under his broad, approving grin. He heads to the other side of the room to assist Seamus, who for some inexplicable reason is emitting puffs of thick smog from his ears. She can smell it from her seat, and it smells like vomit. Professor Flitwick gags at the stench, then waves his wand to clear the air.

"Quite safe, quite safe, Hermione dear." Neville nods at her, adopting an avuncular expression that is extraordinarily suited to his round, jovial features. She snorts.

"_Shh! _Neville, didn't you hear the professor?"

"Yeah, but..." He makes a show of looking around furtively, his wide eyes swivelling from side to side. Professor Snape might just swallow his tongue if he saw how Neville doesn't tremble at the slightest outside of his class. "I've got something for that rash."

"What is it?" she asks, amused.

"Bearberry extract. I don't actually _have _it, but I'm sure I could get you some from Professor Sprout. She loves me," he smirks. An Outstanding O.W.L. in Herbology has done wonders for his confidence.

"Bearberry? But I thought that was used as a diuretic."

"I'm afraid you're going to have to live with the fact that I might just know more than you in this area. It won't kill you, you know. Living with it, I mean. Not the bearberry."

"I don't know... it might."

"Look, d'you want the bearberry or not?"

"Alright, alright," she grouses, rolling her eyes. "You are the veritable master of all things vegetal. I defer to your superior knowledge."

"You know, you move your eyebrows a lot when you're annoyed, have you noticed? They look like happy little caterpillars."

"And _you _are terrible at Potions, but we learn to live with our flaws, don't we?"

"Shut up."

* * *

There is a line through this world.

She hasn't quite figured it out yet.

There is a line (lines?) dividing certain types of people. There are those who make decisions, and those who let the circumstances do it for them. There are those who run to the front lines screaming and flailing bloody murder, and those who cower in the space under the staircase, waiting for someone to draw them out and hold them while they weep. There are those who would die for an ideal, and those who would kill for a Knut.

It's not a new concept, not to anyone. There is strength and weakness, black and white, martyrs and curs, good and evil. She isn't one to believe in things like cosmic balance, nothing melodramatic like that. But she cannot deny that there is an inevitable bifurcation somewhere down the road. She doesn't know exactly what the line separates, but she knows it's there. It's always been there. A living entity breathing in the background, feeding on their choices.

Choices, choices, choices.

It all comes down to that. At least, that's what she's figured out so far.

It doesn't matter who you are, all that matters is what side of the line your shadow touches.

Somehow, she's always known what side to stand on. Maybe it's because she is a Mudblood, and her choice was taken away when the first begrimed vein was torn by someone purer and the first dirty drop hit the earth. Maybe she would have chosen differently if she were one of them. But it's no use speculating about something that can never be, and she likes to think that she would remain the same person, the same bushy-haired know-it-all, no matter what shade of red flows through her veins.

More than once during their detentions, her eyes stray to his arm and she would start to wonder why he joined them. She can't see him as evil, no matter how hard she tries. Evil is shattering your trust in the world. Evil is a desecration of the human. Evil is absolute. He is petty and bitter and hateful and unfair, but not evil.

He saved her life, after all, and if she closes her eyes and breathes slowly, she can almost feel the pads of his fingertips against...

She shakes her head.

She tries very hard not to think about why he joined because it strikes her as being too personal; she feels like an intruder even thinking about it. She reassures herself with the fact that Dumbledore has affirmed and reaffirmed his trust in Professor Snape. Dumbledore has his reasons. Dumbledore knows what he's doing. Dumbledore is their leader.

So she tells herself to stop asking questions. She knows what she is. She is aware of the eagerness with which she seeks answers. Sometimes, though, in matters like this, she would rather have her query fester and die under her tongue than voice it aloud. She knows that if she asks him, if he deigns to answer her at all, he will say that he is just as fetid and loathsome on the inside as he seems to them. And he can be so very convincing.

There is strength and weakness, black and white, martyrs and curs, good and evil. There are lots of shades of grey, but underneath it all there can be only one driving force.

Never let it be said that Hermione Granger doesn't like things to be labelled.

Neatly.

And with nice, even letters, if you please.

Later, when she is starving in a tent during the longest night of the year, when she is covering her own tracks in the snow, when dawn and day are melted and fused into a perpetual uncouth twilight, when she looks up at the stars from her place lying in the dirt and finds that they've been blown out, when she starts to believe that she is changing, bit by painful bit, into quarry, into a tracked animal with the snuffling hounds at her heels, when she wakes up in a pool of blackening blood that isn't her own, when she reaches a point where everything looks the same to her, like reflections underwater, when she longs for the peace of the deep to break over her head so there will be no more need to breathe, when she is searching desperately, wretchedly for something to dilute the horror crystallising in her heart, she will think back to the days when the world was simpler and the air didn't taste like delirium.

* * *

The next night he tells her not to return until he notifies her. He has other things to do, he said, than babysit fractious Gryffindors all night. She misses another opportunity to ask him about the potion.

* * *

Stan Shunpike was arrested and detained by the Aurors for being a Death Eater. For hours later, lying in her bed, she is plagued by the image of a rattling breath and a gaping mouth bending over a pimply boy wearing a lurid purple uniform. The Dementors are gone from Azkaban, she reminds herself. But that doesn't mean that it isn't still an atrocious place. Stan Shunpike is only a little older than they are, but he's played his cards and now he has to pay his debts.

There is something fierce and alive in her stomach and she cannot sleep. Lavender is awake, rustling around in her sheets, but she's adopted a wintry demeanor whenever Hermione's around. Earlier today, Hermione asked her to hand her a book she had dropped, but Lavender told her to "Get up off your dumpy arse and get it yourself, why don't you." Parvati had given her a conciliatory smile and passed her the book instead.

Hermione won't pretend that she doesn't know the reason for this, but she will never acknowledge it first. Let Lavender stew in her own spite.

* * *

When she was five years old, the age of ten was incomprehensible to her. Ten-year-olds were alien creatures with a foreign tongue, standing an entire foot above her head. Ten-year-olds were allowed to take home more than three books from the school library, and they didn't even have to bring them back after only one week. Ten-year-olds could have _sleepovers_.

Ten years old was her brave new world. She counted down the years, then the months, the days, and finally the hours until she turned ten. She stayed up at midnight and counted down the seconds. It was the first two-digit age. An entire decade. A place up in the decimal system.

Then, three... two... one.

The first second of ten years old came and went. The first fifteen minutes. The first hour. There was a lovely dinner with her family and a few school friends (acquaintances, really... she thinks they were just there for the cake). She stayed quiet all throughout the event, because in her newly one-decade-old mind, ten felt just like nine did.

Thirteen became the next impending milestone.

Tacking the -teen to the end of her age felt to her like something worth celebrating. She remembers thinking that the thirteen-year-old girls had a special sort of grace to their movements, a sort of secret way of doing things that gave them the allure of mystery. They blinked a certain way, laughed a certain way, charmed a certain way. Boys _looked_at thirteen-year-old girls. She was never preoccupied with the things that girls her age were usually spending their time on, but still Hermione couldn't help the frisson of longing that thirteen would make a difference.

It didn't.

Fifteen seemed like a nice, solid age at the time. Halfway through the second decade of your life, halfway through the stage between little girl and young lady. But at fifteen she still didn't know what to do with her limbs. At fifteen she still picked on her nails, and sometimes, a very few sometimes, she still forgot to brush her teeth.

At sixteen she found herself in the second cycle of a war that began before her birth. The second cycle of a hundred thousand more that will never really end but always culminate in blood. More than ever she prayed that the milestone would hit her, grab her, shake her, yank her, pull her, _wake_ her. That she would be gifted with that awareness that she wasn't going to make a right muck-up of things. She _needed_to know that she could be counted on, that she could do her part well and not let everybody down because she was, after all, _only sixteen_.

She thought that, perhaps, if she could just reach that point where one decides that one is no longer a child, she could pull herself together and pull them all together and take that step into the chasm and somehow make it out alive.

Seventeen is on its way.

Just a few days more, and she is a legal adult in the Wizarding world.

When does childhood end?

Hermione Granger is a sharp girl, they always say. Brightest witch of her age. Mature. Self-possessed. Capable. But sixteen, like ten, felt just like nine did. And she is terrified that seventeen will be no different.

* * *

"You're late. Ten points from Gryffindor."

"Sorry, sir. It won't happen again. It... It's my birthday, you see." He gives her an inscrutable look. She grimaces, wondering why she even told him.

"Congratulations, Miss Granger. On this date sixteen years ago, through no effort of your own, you were born."

She can't help it; she laughs.

Nothing overt, nothing strident, just an amused little huff. It is the loudest thing in the room, nonetheless. She licks her lips self-consciously. He raises an eyebrow.

"Er... that was a little funny," she offers apologetically. "Oh, and it was seventeen years ago, actually."

"Indeed," he says, eyeing her suspiciously. She squirms under his gaze. Once he is satisfied that nothing seems amiss, he points toward the container of flobberworms. "You may begin."

She moves to stand by her table. He makes no motion to tend to his potion, but instead seems to freeze in place, angling his face toward her. Is he... sniffing? She dismisses this observation and after washing her hands at the sink, she reaches for the first flobberworm—

"Wait. Stop."

"Sir?"

"What is that smell?"

"Er... the flobberworms, sir?" She surreptitiously brings her face to the side to sniff her hair.

"I know what flobberworms smell like, Miss Granger. What is that scent clinging to your hands?"

For some unfathomable reason, the blood rushes to her cheeks.

"Oh, it must be the bearberry extract. Neville gave me some for my rash."

"You didn't inform me of this."

"I didn't really think it was important. The flobberworm ooze just makes my hands itch, that's a—"

"The state of your skin is of no concern to me, girl. Have you no idea of the consequences of exposing live flobberworms to bearberry extract? Where are your protective gloves?"

"Erm... I didn't bring them."

He pinches his lips together in irritation. Well, he _told _her she won't be needing them. She watches as he flicks his wrist and his wand falls into his hand from his sleeve. He waves it in the direction of his office, and a pair of gloves identical to the ones he is wearing soar in through the door and into his waiting hand.

"Come here."

Her footsteps sound ungainly in the silence. She catches her hip against the corner of the table.

"Do try not to upend the furniture, Miss Granger."

He hands her his gloves as she nears him. "Put these on."

They are warm and buttery and entirely too large for her hands. They smell very familiar, and her heart starts climbing up her throat. He waves his wand again and the leather starts constricting, whispering over her skin until the gloves are snug around her fingers. The gloves themselves must be charmed to render the leather impervious to potion ingredients. His magic leaves her fingers tingling with pins and needles.

"Get to those flobberworms, Granger."

"Yes, sir. Thank you." He gives her a terse nod in acknowledgement.

She is fifteen minutes into sorting, a third of the way through the flobberworm bucket, before the question she's been thinking about for two weeks now flies out of her mouth.

"Sir, what is that potion you are brewing?"

"What did I tell you before you started your first detention?"

"Er... you said you have no wish to be subjected to my infernal tittering, and you told me to conquer my pathological need to speak, raise my hand, ask questions, or otherwise make a nuisance of myself." She takes a deep breath, having said all that in one swift exhalation. He looks over his shoulder at her, his top lip twitching infinitesimally.

"That is what I said. Word for word, as always." From him, this is no compliment.

There are several beats of silence, punctuated by the occasional _pop _of a viscous bubble from the silver cauldron.

"Suffice it to say that I am brewing this potion at the behest of the Headmaster."

"Oh. Alright." She furrows her brows, perplexed and a little amazed that he even thought to answer her, vague as his response was. She wants to ask him what the potion does, but she doesn't want to push her luck.

* * *

Whoever this 'Half-Blood Prince' is, he (or she) is nothing more than a rogue and a cheat with a penchant for disregarding instruction. She eyes Harry's copy of Advanced Potion-Making with ill-disguised malice.

"Stop looking at it if it bothers you so much," Harry laughs.

"I'm surprised it doesn't bother _you_, Harry Potter," she says stiffly. "I never took you for the type that _cheats_."

"Oh, come off it. He's just better than you at P—"

"What he is better at is going off by himself and putting everyone in danger by experimenting with potentially volatile combinations! How could he possibly know the effects of altering the instructions without testing it first? He is arrogant and misguided, and I don't care at all for his superior results if _that's_the way he goes about doing things." She tops her rant off with a toss of her head. Harry laughs at her.

"So that makes two of them, now. Three things, actually, if you count Quidditch."

"Two what?"

"Two subjects I'm better than you in; Defense and Potio—"

"I dare you to finish that sentence, Potter. Go ahead and _finish_ it and I'll finish _you_."

* * *

He was brewing his potion and she was focused on the flobberworms. But then she hears this strange sound, a guttural, raspy moan like a sheet of silk tearing in half. She looks around in surprise.

"You may leave early tonight, Miss Granger." His voice sounds odd and strained.

"Oh. But I was almost—"

He groans again, deep and ragged. The sound reverberates in the room and her treacherous brain plays it in a loop over an image of his hand against her chest.

_What the hell is wrong with you?_

She clamps her teeth around the flesh of her cheek to keep her attention away from the heat in her neck threatening to drive her to distraction. Her tongue feels thick and dry. When she speaks, her voice seems to catch on her teeth on its way out.

"S-sir, are you alright?"

He doesn't answer. Instead, he drops the knife he is holding and wraps his gloved hands around the edge of the table. It trembles under his grip, and she imagines his knuckles whitening under the leather. His breath is hard and fast.

She moves quickly, washing her hands in the sink behind her. _God_, he's obviously in pain and all she can think about is how his hand felt between her breasts. And she thought she was different from the other girls.

"Sir?" she asks more confidently, her guilt bringing her back to herself. She edges around her table to stand by him. "Where does it hurt?" She tries not to sound too condescending, but he doesn't seem to hear her. Propriety wars with concern in her brain. As in countless times before, concern wins out.

She brings her head around his side to look up at his face. Through the curtain of his hair, she can see that his forehead and the bridge of his nose have acquired a moist sheen, a drop of sweat tracing the curve of his cheekbone. Two high spots of color have appeared on his cheeks. They look strange against his waxy pallor. His nostrils are flaring, his lips slack and revealing the bottom row of his crooked teeth. He is panting like a dog.

"Professor, are you ill? Would you like me to take you to the Hospital Wing?" she asks insistently, placing a hand on his shoulder.

His eyes snap to hers and he jerks his entire left side away from her so violently that he stumbles backward for two steps. His grip on the table is strong enough that the cauldron tips precariously to the side, sloshing molten gold over its rim. The fire beneath it sputters and hisses.

"Don't touch me!" he snarls vehemently, his features twisted with fury. He looks at her with heaving shoulders and clenched fists.

This is when she notices the bulge straining against his trousers, and her throat closes in on itself.

_Oh_.

Oh, _God_.

_Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God_.

He seems to sense her discomfort, because he yanks his robes shut around his front and gives her a sneer of such potent disgust that she has to look down at herself to check that she isn't covered in flobberworms.

"Don't flatter yourself, stupid girl. Did you think that _pain _is the Dark Lord's only method of calling us to him?"

His words are as severe as ever, but there is a look in his eyes that she cannot place, a nervous tension in his jaw that is utterly uncharacteristic of this indomitable man. Her breath leaves her lungs in one big huff. She is certain that all the blood in her body has accumulated in her face, as her cheeks are burning, but her fingers and toes have gone icy in her borrowed gloves and slouchy socks.

Okay.

_Okay. _

We're fine, Granger.

Okay.

His eyes are black marbles burning into her own, but his gaze leaves her strangely cold. It's almost like... like he is _daring_ her to call him words like lecherous and vile, to run away in affront back to her tower, to protect her own virtue from the lascivious Death Eater. And... and maybe that _was_ her first impulse, but now the thought is _inconceivable_to her. At least, it became so when she saw the look on his face. She can never be so unfeeling as that.

Suddenly a wave of indignation takes hold of her and erases her own embarrassment, because this must be absolutely _humiliating _for him. She is worked up into a snit before she knows it.

"But that—that's _so_—it's perverse! And barbaric, hideous manipulation! How could you let him make you _want_something like that, it's—"

"Wrong? _Evil_?" he says with a demeaning sneer. "Let's not forget who we are talking about. It is effective, it amuses him, and that alone is reason enough."

Effective makes sense. Surely, there is nothing more binding than pain, but pleasure. She wants him to understand that she isn't afraid of him, but she cannot find the words.

"But you don't... you can't possibly _like_—"

"Do not speak of matters you don't comprehend!" he growls. She didn't mean to imply that he actually enjoyed... _that_, but she—

She doesn't know what she meant to say.

The tendons in his neck are straining, and his eyes roll to the back of his head as another wanton hiss escapes from between his teeth.

The sound slithers pruriently against her skin and raises the hairs on the back of her neck.

"Go," he whispers.

"But you—"

"_Get. Out_. Now!"

He jerks his hand in the direction of the classroom door, one that leads directly to the hallway. She jumps as it hits the wall with enough force to topple a shelf full of glass instruments next to it.

"I—"

He starts toward her with a savage look on his face and she doesn't need him to tell her again. But he _needs _to know that she isn't afraid of him.

"Be safe, Professor."

She turns on her heel before he can say anything and walks out the room as briskly as she can, bits of glass crunching underfoot.

* * *

He isn't at the staff table the next morning. But when she walks into the Defense classroom he is as impassive as ever, his eyes as stringent as ever, his hands as firm as ever, and she is certain that the gasping, trembling man in the Potions classroom last night was an impostor.

* * *

"It's Granger, isn't it?"

She looks up in surprise.

"Yes. Can I help you?"

"Cormac McLaggen," he says, offering his hand to her with an air of a regent bestowing his favor upon a vassal. "I'm trying out for Keeper. Though I wouldn't really say 'trying out.' Not much competition out today, yeah?"

"Is that so?" she says, a little coolly. "Ron Weasley happens to be my friend."

"Oh, don't worry your pretty little head about it. I'm not gonna hurt him," he smirks. She tries not to grind her teeth and gives him a tight smile.

"That Ginny Weasley though... is she his sister? Lovely bit of trim, but nothing that belongs on a Quidditch pitch," he leers. She shifts herself so that she doesn't have to see him.

"So what's your first name? I asked Potter, but it was something odd so I can't remember."

She doesn't answer, scanning the pitch for signs of Ron.

He taps her on the knee. She jerks her leg away.

"_What_?"

"Don't be like that, love. I only wanted your name."

"It's nothing you should concern yourself with, _McLaggen_."

"Oh, someone's feisty. I never would have expected it. I heard you're a clever one. But don't worry, I don't mind a girl that likes to read, as long as she has a bit of spark."

He gives her a grin that makes her feel utterly violated. He bends over to tighten his shoelaces and she sees her chance.

"_Confundo_," she coughs into her hand.

She stifles her laughter as McLaggen struggles with his laces. He gives up after two minutes, looking up at her with a befuddled smile and a glaze in his eye.

"It's Granger, isn't it?"

She smiles like a shark.

"Yes. Can I help you?"

* * *

A golden atrium. A large room with blue flames. Clocks. Brains in a tank.

An amphitheatre. An archway. _Let's go, let's go, okay?_

_Nobody's talking, Harry._

Shelves of orbs.

Then... the Death Eaters. Glass raining down on their faces.

Running—running—running—casting over their shoulders—masked faces getting closer—

Antonin Dolohov—his features more detailed than she could remember in the daylight—rough-hewn face, pointy teeth like he spends every night filing them down, skin hanging below his neck with ruddy patches like a wattle—

A silent slash, a purple flame—

And Harry, his shirt suddenly red_red_red, his spine arching gracefully, his mouth open in surprise—

Then she is back in her dorm room, clutching at the sheets, sweat-drenched and sobbing. She waits for the darkness to swallow the sour stench of fear in her bloodstream, waits for the adrenaline to seep away into nothing.

Other times it is Neville she sees, his plump chin quivering as he hits the ground with a thump. Or Luna, her eyes frozen in bewilderment, her blonde corkscrew curls suspended in the air as she falls. Some nights, Dolohov breaks free from the Silencing Charm and the curse bursts from his lips—an ancient imprecation, terrible and arcane and a noxious shade of violet like sin.

She stuffs her hand up her shirt, curling it in that space between her breasts. The scar tissue is no longer rough, but the jagged line is still cooler and paler than the rest of her skin. It's presence is strangely comforting. She cannot explain it, but she knows that she will take that curse, Silencing Charm or not, over and over and over until her chest is torn asunder.

Just as long as they are safe.

Please—just please someone keep them safe.

The tears cool on her face. Her eyelids slowly slide shut, and she succumbs to the comforting pull of slumber.

* * *

"_What. The fuck. Are you still doing here_." His voice is no louder than a whisper, but his tone contains all the fatality of the shriek of a guillotine. She is jolted awake, and she has to grip the sides of the chair she positioned in front of the fireplace to keep herself from sliding off. Behind him, the coals are smoldering green with Floo Powder residue. The look in his unfocused eyes almost kills her.

Outside, dawn is just beginning to bleach the sky.

"Please don't be angry, Professor, I was just worried—"

"I _specifically_instructed you to be gone by the time I return."

"No! I mean, yes, but _please_! You can't expect to me to just—to just _leave_ after you left in that state! Are you—_please_—are you hurt?"

He is panting and sweating, blood trickling down the corner of his cracked lips. His hair hangs in greasy strings around his face. He reeks once again of alcohol and blood, of something sickly sweet that barely covers up the tang of vomit, of something musky and pungent that makes her think of improper things. The sight of him frightens her, because he looks so different from her buttoned-up, clamped-shut professor, so ugly and debauched and unhinged.

From his fingers hang a white mask. She doesn't look at it.

Suddenly she has this wild impulse to do something that would infuriate him, that would challenge him and make him call her awful things, something—_anything_—to take away the slouch in his spine, the unfamiliar clumsiness in his movements, the tawdry haze polluting his eyes.

She doesn't know what she is thinking when she gets up and touches her fingertips to his cheek.

It is clammy to her touch. His eyes widen, childlike and unrecognisable in the cloying half-darkness. His lips open a fraction of an inch, before his expression shutters and the look is gone. It twinges at something in her stomach. And she knows how awful it is to be pitied by others but she can't help but pity _him_. She has to be careful not to let him see it.

"Thirty points from Gryffindor!" he snarls belatedly, and she snatches her hand away and backs off. "Don't take such liberties with me, girl! I am your _professor_." His eyes scan her face wildly, as if searching for any evidence that she is mocking him in his reduced and confounded state.

"N-no, sir. I apologise. Do you... Do you need anything?"

One second.

Five.

Ten.

Ten seconds where the only sound is his labored breathing and her rioting heartbeat.

"What is it you are trying to do, Granger?" he says in a broken-low-aching voice.

What _is_she trying to do?

Why _the hell_is she even here?

In her head he is looking down at her, her blood dripping from his face and his lips moving rapidly around an enchantment that saved her life. She wonders if this is just one of the parts he plays, or if this really is what drew him to Voldemort in the first place. But surely, _surely_ even if he wanted it when he was younger, even if he wept for it and pledged his lifeblood to it, _surely_he must regret it now, this dirty, disgusting, clinging hold that the darkness has over him.

"I just want to help you, sir," she replies, her voice small.

There it is again, that look of confusion. She decided that's what it is in his eyes, all those times he glanced at her just so. She didn't recognise it at first because she is too accustomed to his acrimony. Confusion doesn't meld well to his trenchant black.

As always, it is brief and barely noticeable.

"I—"

A pained look crosses his face and he staggers forward. This is wrong, so very, very wrong because this is Professor Snape, and why does he look _so weak_?

She catches him by the shoulders as his knee bumps painfully against her thigh and his forehead glances off her cheekbone. The smell on him almost makes her retch, and there is a dampness in his robes that she doesn't care to examine too closely. His hands come up behind her and she feels them grip the back of her shirt. His entire body is trembling. She feels a prickling behind her eyeballs, and she tries very hard to ignore it. Her hands tighten around his thin shoulders.

"Professor, I'll just—I'll help you, okay? Okay? I won't do anything you won't like, and I'll leave after, I promise."

She knows she is babbling, but she has this insane need to cover up the silence and her own nervousness and his harsh clawing breaths with a sound—any sound.

She gasps as he tries to twist away, his sharp hip banging against hers. She tries to contain her revulsion as he softly thrusts against her and groans, his erection brushing against her stomach. Everything in her is shouting at her to get out and separate herself from... from whatever this is. But she knows that he is helpless against it, that it is a remnant of Voldemort's special brand of manipulation, and the thought injects her with an anger so fierce that she can almost feel the vein throbbing in her temple.

"Damn you," he whispers.

"It's okay, it's okay," she whispers, over and over, rubbing circles into his back as she maneuvers herself so that his arm is around her shoulders. She stumbles under his weight, and struggles to lower him into the chair she just vacated. He folds in on himself, resting his elbows on his knees and placing his face in his hands.

She runs back to the classroom, where his golden potion is bubbling merrily under a stasis charm. She grabs a bowl off the supply shelf and transfigures it into a glass. She curses as she drops it through slippery fingers, the tinkling of breaking glass too sharp in her own ears. She grabs another bowl.

"Aguamenti," she whispers. She doesn't know why, but she doesn't want to hear the sound of her own voice at the moment. She rushes back to him, kneeling by his feet.

"Here, Professor, drink this." He looks at her then, but his eyes go straight through her. "_Please_, sir."

He grabs the glass from her, spilling water over them both, and tilts it to his mouth. Rivulets of water run down his chin, down his neck, and disappear into his collar. She stands, wringing her hands, no idea what to do next.

"Okay, okay, okay," she whispers, over and over. They stay like this for several minutes; he holding the empty glass, his chin glistening wet, his eyes staring at some horror incomprehensible to her, and she fluttering nervously in front of him. This is how Severus Snape is imprisoned, she thinks.

_We are all bound, aren't we? We of the wicked calling_.

Bound to duty, to honor, to loyalty, bound with an iron band of self-loathing around his throat. And her chest aches for him, because no one, _no one_, deserves this.

And there she is, Hermione Granger with nothing to offer but a transfigured glass half-filled with water.

"You may leave now," he says. His voice almost sounds normal, just a little more gravelly, a little less incisive. His lips are still trembling, but his eyes are burning with cold resentment. He is staring at something over her shoulder.

"Are you—will you be alright?" She wants to help him, but she can hardly bear it. She hopes that he doesn't think she wants to get out of here as quickly as she can. It's just... she doesn't know where to look, and she no longer knows what to think.

"I am not a child, Miss Granger. It would do you well to remember that I am a Death Eater, and I am accustomed to pain," he sneers.

Her breath hitches.

"Yes, sir," she says briskly before her eyes start to prickle again. "I—you... try to get some rest, sir."

* * *

She passes him in the hall two days later on her way to lunch. He looks well, and he is walking with his usual, evenly-measured stride. But before she can worry about what to say to him, he is past her. He didn't look, didn't glance, didn't breathe in her direction, and she tells herself that she isn't upset, not even a little bit, because this is exactly what she expected would happen. She swallows the clot in her throat and makes her way to the Great Hall.

Later in class he takes twenty points from Gryffindor "For loitering in the hallway like a feckless idiot."

* * *

He joined them in a moment of weakness, she thinks.

Though weak isn't really a word that she would normally use to describe him. He is far too barbed for banal things like that, far too weather-worn. Like all his life has been one long, slow burn, the vagaries of experience charring the softness of youth, tapering the furnishings that so perturb and beguile lesser men, chipping away until all that is left is an impenetrable, stone-cold core.

There is no room for weakness there. Weakness slides off his angles.

But at some point in his past, the weakness found a crag to hang on to, a crevice to creep into. It wormed its way in, defining his future in a way he could have never imagined. It makes her wonder... is that really how it works? That those who are born feeble and hesitant can make more than their fair share of mistakes, but those who would dare to yearn for the air make one misstep and break their bodies on the rocks below?

She trusts him, though. The thought comes into her mind, unbidden.

She trusts him, she trusts him, she _trusts _him.

And the certitude of this pronouncement almost knocks the wind out of her.

* * *

"Hermione Granger?"

She turns around. Harry and Ron give her inquiring looks, but she just shrugs.

"Yes?"

The girl looks no older than a first year. Her hair is a lovely shade of brown that puts Hermione's to shame. Though, if she cared about such things, she would admit that most kinds of hair put her own to shame. The girl gives her a radiant smile, and Hermione can't help but like her immediately.

"Professor Snape asked me to give this to you," she says brightly, handing her a rolled up piece of parchment. The girl does this with an air of someone accomplishing some great and noble task. Hermione smiles at her.

"Thank you. What's your name?"

"I'm Amelia Brodeck," she says with a pleased grin.

"Well, thanks Amelia."

"What's that?" Ron asks from behind her.

"Oh, nothing, just some assignments I missed."

"You _missed _some assignments?" he says, holding his hand up to his heart.

"Oh, shut up. They're for extra credit."

"Oh. I should have known."

She opens the seal later in her bed. She doesn't know why she lied about it to Harry and Ron.

_You will meet me in my office at 7 pm every Friday night. I require assistance with the headmaster's potion. Tell no one. _

As soon as she reads it, the ink disappears into the parchment. It's just like him to not even think about asking her if she is free on Friday nights. She is, but that's beside the point. She tells herself that the swoop she feels in her gut is one of terror, and not anticipation.

* * *

What is this word, 'truth'?

Most of the time, she knows. She is a Gryffindor, after all, and at the end of the day, when push comes to shove, she will drop her books in a heartbeat and leave the careful analysis to the Ravenclaws. Most of the time, she knows who she is and what she is fighting for.

When she is older, when she hits that milestone that she is waiting for, when she is _awake_, she will find out that the truth hurts. It doesn't set you free; all of that is bollocks that was said by someone who's never really found it. The truth leaves you with gaping wounds and it hurts like three-inch nails in your feet, like water flooding your nostrils, like cigarette burns to your insides, melted asphalt running through your unyielding veins

The truth can gash you so deeply that you can't live with the wounds any longer, and after the war, most of them, even though they will never admit it, want only to live.

As painlessly as possible.

It's only human.

* * *

A/N:

Just to be clear, Snape got to keep his old office, as per canon, despite being reassigned to Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts.


	7. Seven

She is an adult.

An _ad_-ult.

An ad-_ult_.

_Didn't you want this? _she asks herself.

She did. She did. She does.

* * *

Ginny hovers over her shoulder like she does when she wants to talk about something. Hermione wouldn't have said anything, but Ginny has been far too quiet lately, and she is a friend, and this is a friend's job.

"Did you need something?"

Ginny lets her body drop bonelessly onto the sofa beside Hermione and pushes her tongue into that space behind her lower lip before she speaks.

"I dunno... It's silly."

"Oh, come on. You obviously want to talk about something. You can't just pique my curiosity like that and then not say anything."

"Well, okay. But don't laugh. Swear it. _Swear. It._," Ginny says fiercely. Her jaw is set in a way that is almost cruel.

"Al-_right_. I swear. There. Are you happy now?"

"Maybe. Okay. So... D'you ever feel like... D'you ever think that you're the wrong size?" Ginny looks down into her lap. It is very rare for Ginny to avoid eye contact like this, and her discomfort makes Hermione uncomfortable as well.

Hermione contemplates feigning misunderstanding and maybe scoffing a little bit.

Ginny's always had this tough-girl veneer she likes to project to people, this sassy sort of sharpness that she likes to pretend she was born with. But there was one time Hermione entered the room they shared in the Burrow without knocking and found Ginny sobbing into her pillow. It was the summer after Harry started going for Cho Chang.

She is too young.

And, really, aren't they all?

Perhaps a year ago Hermione would have said something like age is just a number or some such twaddle.

But war has that effect of whitewashing what you once knew, and though she is still the same person, still the same bull-headed stiff-spined know-it-all, she has learned to be a little more cautious. A little less brave. A little less sure of whatever the hell is coming out of her mouth.

And sometimes she would lie in her bed, feeling her blood pulse and pound all the way down to her toes, and she would want to cry. Sometimes she would try to bring up a mental catalogue of all the things people say about her. Hermione Granger: Gryffindor prefect. Intelligent. Resourceful. Whip-quick tongue. Loyal and spirited and good.

This would feel nice, for a while.

Sometimes she doesn't know how to feel at all.

The point is that Hermione is hardly the fount of wisdom that her friends seem to think she is, and she doesn't want to be responsible for any misconceptions they might form because of something she'd said. She isn't sure any longer what she thought she was. She hates the cold, sticky taste of self-awareness in the back of her throat.

In situations like this, Hermione resorts to (unwanted and mostly uncomfortable) humor.

"Well... I know it doesn't really matter; it's the inside that counts and all that. But it nice to be a little less flat-chested."

Good God, _Hermione_. Just... Just _stop_.

"Oh? Hermione Granger making a joke? Don't hurt yourself now," Ginny scoffs.

"Shut up. I was just answering your question."

"That wasn't what I meant and you know it, you closeted floozy, you," Ginny says, pinching Hermione's waist. Hermione tries to twist away but Ginny's always been quicker than she is.

"Ow, _ow_! Okay!" she shrieks. She turns to face Ginny fully and pretends to hold a clipboard in front of her. "Why don't you lie on my couch and tell me how you feel, sweetheart?"

Ginny gives her a worried look but curls herself further into the couch anyway.

"I dunno. I guess I mean, do you ever feel like there are too many things going on? Too many events? Too many... torments?"

She's never heard Ginny use the word 'torment' before. It's not that Ginny has a small vocabulary. It's an odd word for _anyone _to use in casual conversation. It has certain connotations that smack of the dreadful and the tenebrous. Things like overcast skies and portentous winds. Secret things, like shame and doubt and painful pretenses. Things that should be beyond their comprehension.

Hermione drops the pretend clipboard and looks at the other girl, her silly smile fading into the faint lines around her mouth.

"We're in a war, Ginny." Hermione says this even though she can hardly believe it, herself.

"Yes, I know."

"I don't mean to be a killjoy."

"I know, I know, you didn't _start_the bleeding war, after all. I just... Sometimes I feel like my life is spilling over everywhere, that it was never cut to fit someone like me. Fred and George always tell me how powerful my spells are, Mum says it's something to do with being the seventh child of a seventh child, something like that."

"You do cast a mean Bat-Bogey."

"Yeah. But there's still—_ugh_. I really wish I had your vocabulary at times like this. I feel like I should be doing something. Something big. No, maybe not big, but something that _matters_. But what the hell can I do, you know? Is it my fault, maybe? Is it because I don't know how to—maybe if I were bigger, like Charlie. Or—or more experienced, like Bill."

Hermione doesn't know why she is surprised that Ginny is feeling the same exact thing she is. The feeling that the world is too big, that it's rotating too slowly and you have this mad need to make it go faster but you can't because your arms are too weak. The feeling that you don't know how to sort things, how to take what you need and leave the rest. The feeling that the century you live in is like a giant crater; the excess of everyday flows into it, and it's filled with everything that cuts and burns and flays and crushes, and it just isn't _fair_. The feeling that your head's on the point of exploding, like a shell crammed with gunpowder.

But Hermione has always been the girl that hopes too hard. And she wants to grab Ginny by the shoulders and tell her that it's going to be alright. That they are together, and she doesn't have to worry, because they will _make _it alright. We'll figure it out, Ginny. We always do, don't we?

We are _perfect _for this, she wants to say.

We are _hand-picked _for this, she wants to say.

But the feeling is too big in her chest, and the words too small, and the moment for speaking passes, and they are nothing more than a couple of kids tangled in the twisted strands of something that is too vast for them.

There is a hole in the upholstering of her armchair that presents itself as something to look at, and that is exactly what Hermione does. She traces it's edges with her finger and isn't surprised when it is Ginny that speaks first.

"Do you ever feel like that, Hermione?"

"I don't know. I do, I suppose," she responds slowly without looking up from the hole. It would be so easy to end the conversation. She can just make the time-tested excuse of homework, and that would be that.

Ginny remains silent. Hermione bites her lip.

"No, I'm sorry. That wasn't very truthful. I _do _feel it. All the time. It's not just you."

"Do you think maybe... That Harry feels this way? Just sometimes?"

"More than anyone, I think. He —you know how he hates it when people can see that he's not so sure about things. We're all the same way, us Gryffindors," Hermione laughs.

"Yeah," Ginny smiles so wistfully that Hermione can almost see the memories floating in front of her, and she can't help but admire how pretty Ginny is. "That's one of the things I lo—like about him. He's got a very... a very unique strength in him, and sometimes he can be so convincing at it that other people look at him and pull their shit together."

"That's very well put, Ginny," she responds, a little taken aback. But maybe she shouldn't be. Ginny and Harry have always understood each other well. She pretends not to catch Ginny's slip of tongue.

"Always the tone of surprise, eh?"

"Well, coming from you, that was quite impressive."

"Oh, ha-ha, you titless munter," Ginny snorts.

And they sit there, the two of them, and it could have been twenty minutes or three hours. It's amazing how easily big, bulky things like fear, insecurity, and war can be pushed aside on afternoons like this, in that hour when the light exalts things, and everything that was ever old and dusty and worn is rebirthed in new splendor.

They sit there for twenty minutes or three hours enjoying each others company, sometimes talking, sometimes falling silent and thinking about the silence and how it isn't that bad at all, and how, sometimes, it is enough to sit in the dusty light of the common room in a lazy late afternoon grace with a good friend.

Maybe it's just her. But maybe everyone else feels it too. Hope, that is. Even if they try to sweep it under the rugs like it is something filthy, like it is something that no one can ever see.

* * *

The harvest moon surges ripe and red from the darkening horizon and it calls to the magic coiling through her veins. Its sinister crimson light curves through the thick glass of the window and hits her eye just so, and she feels like a Celtic queen celebrating conquest.

* * *

She wishes she can say that the faintly flickering sensation in her stomach is purely of an academic nature. But she's not that good at lying to herself. Not yet.

She finished all her homework for the week, and most of her reading for next week, by 4:30.

She showered at 4:45, taking special care to leave the conditioner in for an additional five minutes before rinsing it out. She didn't actually know if this helps tame a bit of the frizziness, but she reckoned it wouldn't hurt to try.

By 5:00 she was dressed in a plain white Oxford shirt and her best pleated skirt. Well. Her only skirt, barring the Hogwarts uniform. They were rather indistinguishable, when she thought about it.

At 5:02 she realised that brewing could be messy, and so she fished out a pair of jeans and tossed her skirt back in her trunk.

At 5:15 she decided that no, the conditioner does not help much at all with anything. She started plaiting her hair.

By 5:30 she gave it up as a bad job. Her arms were hurting. Her forehead was starting to sweat. Her hair was probably reacting to the stress, and would not be plaited.

At 6:00 she settled for some extra reading. She tried not to count the seconds.

At 6:12 she changed back into her skirt. Then she told herself to stop being so pathetic, and changed back into jeans. She stowed her skirt at the very bottom of her trunk and locked it. She never looked back.

At 6:30 she made her way down to the dungeons. She congratulated herself on her choice of dress, as the October draught wound its way around her denim-protected legs.

At 6:46 she was sitting in her alcove.

At nineteen hours, fifty-nine minutes, and forty-eight seconds, she was standing in front of his door, her eyes riveted to the face of her watch.

Eleven seconds.

Seven.

Four.

Two.

At 7:00 she knocks, and the door swings open rather dramatically. She wonders if she will ever enter this doorway with confidence, or if she is forever doomed to lurk in front of it feeling like a chastised schoolgirl every single time, itching all over and fidgeting up a storm. As she enters, the door closes behind her with a soft _whump_, the force sucking all the air out of the already airless room.

She finds him in his private lab. This time, all the other tables have been pushed to the walls, and there isn't a squirming vat of flobberworms waiting for her anywhere. She breathes a sigh of relief, despite knowing full well the reason she is here tonight.

"You may use these, Miss Granger," he says, indicating a pair of gloves lying on the table in front of him. They are the same pair she used the last time she was here, identical to the ones on his hands.

"Sir? But aren't those yours? I have my own."

"Your gloves are inadequate," he sniffs superciliously, as if the very existence of her protective gloves is a personal affront to him. "Unless you don't mind erasing your fingerprints."

"Oh. Alright. Thank you, then." She approaches him and takes the gloves, rolling up her sleeves and slipping the supple dragonhide up to her forearms. She tries not to ponder the cost that went into making them. It's not as if he's _giving_them to her, after all. They're just a temporary loan for the time she's to assist him with his potion. In any case, any potion that requires protective gear of this calibre is bound to be an exciting brew.

"If you have any questions pertaining to anything other than this potion, I suggest you get them out of the way now."

She looks at him in surprise, but he is busy scanning his notes in a journal. His handwriting on the yellowed pages is even more cramped and harried than it is on the chalkboard in class or in the margins of their essays.

"Why do you need my help, sir?" she asks, twisting the fingertip of her borrowed glove.

He sighs. She had come here half-thinking he'd invited her to help just for the pleasure of slamming the door in her face, and she told herself she wouldn't pester him, but she isn't the sort of person who has it in her to resist asking whenever freely given the opportunity. Or _not _freely. Whichever.

"This potion requires, as I have told you before, a great degree of concentration and skill. If not brewed with a precise eye and an attentive hand, there is bound to be some unpleasantness. You are aware of my responsibilities as a Death Eater. The Dark Lord's summons have increased in regularity."

A pall of silence settles over them as they both remember the events of the other night. She had been determined not to allude to it in any way, shape, or form. She recognises the symptoms of pride in Professor Snape, symptoms that she herself is intimately familiar with. Pride has always been something that the Slytherins shared with the Gryffindors. She knows that if it had been her, she would have done anything to keep it a secret.

"In the event that I am summoned or otherwise made unable to continue brewing, you shall take my place. The Order requires a fresh brew every week, and there is no room for mistakes. Professor Slughorn has informed me that you are one of his best pupils—" _the_ best, if it isn't for that ruddy git of a _Prince_, she thinks savagely—"and I know from experience that your skill in Potions is... adequate. At least, when you aren't focused on hissing instructions in your slack-jawed friends' untalented ears."

Her brutal contemplation of what she would like to do to the Half-Blood Prince is cut short. Did he just say... adequate?

She feels the heat rush to her cheeks, and she knows that she is smiling as if he had just sung praises of her beauty to the corners of the Earth.

He spit the word like it burned his tongue, but it doesn't bother her.

"We shall not begin unless you stop smiling like a homicidal zealot, Miss Granger."

"No, sir. Sorry, sir," she concedes quickly, unwilling to let his acrid remarks ruin her mood.

"Now then, what have you told your friends?"

"I told them nothing, sir. Nothing about helping you brew, that is. I said I had to pick up some extra credit assignments tonight."

"Very well. Extra credit it is. Keep in mind that you were picked for this task as a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and no actual points will be awarded to you. Make sure that neither Potter nor Weasley be apprised of the true nature of our meetings. Can I trust you in this?" he says, giving her a look implying his unflattering opinion of her trustworthiness.

"Well, certainly, Professor, but why? I mean, if you can trust me, then you can tru—"

"_Can I trust you in this, Miss Granger_?" He looks at her hard and she feels like this is the most important question he has ever asked her, and she doesn't know if she should be alarmed that she has to think about it, at first, because what is Hermione Granger if not trustworthy?

Can I trust you?

Can I trust you in this, Miss Granger?

"Yes... yes, sir."

He looks at her harder still.

"I _will_know if you lie to me."

"Of course, sir."

* * *

On those life insurance advertisements that come on the telly every five minutes, they always feature some poor, beleaguered old lady with her crepe-paper hands nestled in her lap, gnarled fingers twisting her filigreed wedding band like prayer beads, as if she can find the answers to her life's problems etched somewhere around the curve of her ring.

Just one more turn. One turn more. Please just one more and surely everything will be alright.

This is what Hermione pictures as she watches Dumbledore on the staff table. On the rare times that he is in Hogwarts, and the even rarer times that he comes down to the Great Hall during mealtimes, she can see that he's acquired the habit of wringing his wrist with short, convulsive movements. Harry seems to have noticed it as well, and is watching the headmaster with almost the same degree of obsessiveness as he watches Malfoy.

She remembers the time she and her mum took the car to Kensington to care for Great Aunt Phyllis while her son took care of some work function in New York. She had been, what, six? Anyway, Great Aunt Phyllis had been a formidable hulk of a woman, just an inch under six feet tall, with the gait and demeanor of someone who trained wild beasts for a living. She'd been a lawyer during a time when women were encouraged to go to school, but frowned upon when they used their education for anything other than raising a respectable family. She was something of an upstart, her mum said; defiant for defiance's sake.

She had a son. Lewis Pennington, who'd grown up a ne'er do well. Mrs. Granger said her cousin Lewis used to fag about in seedy alleys with chlamydia-ridden prostitutes for the entirety of his teenage years. He'd got a permanent ban on his drivers' license, and had to take public transportation around everywhere. If he was pissed, he got Hermione's mum to take him home. The piquant cling of throw up and whiskey couldn't be washed off her back seat. Phyllis had been convinced he was off at University, though she didn't really care either way. She was terribly neglectful of him.

Only the barest sense of familial obligation kept Lewis to his mother, and still he leapt at every opportunity to leave Phyllis in the hands of distant relatives, using 'work functions' as an excuse. Mrs. Granger never liked Lewis, and was forever skeptical of the methods by which he gained employment in the wake of his past as a minging greebo. Phyllis may have been an awful parent, but she was intelligent and well-connected, not to mention intimidating as hell. Or maybe he just sobered up and straightened out.

Hermione had been expecting to be greeted by something like Churchill in a dress.

She recoiled when she first beheld Great Aunt Phyllis.

At eighty-seven, there was nary an echo of the browbeating barrister Phyllis Pennington. Maybe a little, in the way her eyes glinted sharp and blue in a certain light, or the way she moved her fingers impatiently, as in the precursor to a snap. But it was runoff, at best. Damp dregs at the bottom of a chipped mug. A diluted reverberation of a force that once decimated barriers.

Years in high heels had ruined her bones and left her a paltry five feet and five inches, a degradation when compared to her former height. She moved in a shuffling, hunched sort of way, like she was protecting herself from the outside world, taking special care where she placed her feet. She'd taken to shades of jewel green and lurid purple. On her flaccid eyelids were smeared dabs of sparkling aqua powder. Her nails were painted a saucy sort of violet, and their edges were trimmed to perfect half-moons. She was wearing some kind of tunic in a diaphanous and dizzying combination of the two colors. Her spreading bosom was bespattered with skin tags of varied shapes and sizes and shades of brown. The scent of old furniture clung to her, a dusty, pine sort of tang, and her skin was soft and pliant like powdered dough.

This artificial glamor seemed even more pathetic when Hermione helped her mum bathe her aunt. Her breasts were leather bags half-filled with soup and sewn to her chest wall. The worst part was the jokes that Phyllis made about her sagging body, like she didn't even care if all and sundry were to see her bare and stooped, her vertebrae blunt knobs jutting out of her back, her lips, denuded of rouge, wrinkled strips bordering a gaping, toothless maw. After helping her bathe, Hermione's mum helped Phyllis set her hair and put on her cosmetics.

Hermione had never been accused of vanity, but there is something about the geriatric and enfeebled that she finds deeply unsettling. The very thought plagued her with guilt, and as soon as she realised this she could never look Phyllis in the eye again. Perhaps her six-year-old self had sensed that, someday, it will be she struggling up the staircase. Someday, she too will be four inches shorter, her eyes sunken into their sockets, her knees the thickest part of her legs. It might take longer than eighty-seven years with her magical blood, but even magic is helpless against the ravages of time.

Perhaps it's just something inherently human. One of those irrational fears, deep-seated and embarrassing, the kind you never talk about with other people, not even your best friends. The fear of being undesirable, of being infirm and dependent, of being alone. The fear of losing something that you cherished within yourself, of being somehow lessened and shrunk in the eyes of society. The fear of death.

No. Not death, really.

It's more the knowledge that sometimes death can take more than that one jolting second of an abrogated heartbeat. It can be drawn out over years and years until you get used to going to bed at night and wondering if tomorrow will be the day that they will find you stiff and cold, and when it finally does happen, everyone's been expecting it for so long that it hardly makes a ripple. And the idea terrifies her.

It's not very Gryffindor at all.

Or maybe it _is_, at the very core. Gryffindor, that is. To abhor a quiet expiration. To prefer annihilation to old age.

There had been one particularly shameful moment when Hermione had dropped Aunt Phyllis dentures' in disgust when her mum had handed them to her. She still feels the self-reproach in the back of her brain, raw and slimy and insistent. It wasn't her proudest moment. She makes sure to send Aunt Phyllis lovely Christmas cards every year to make up for her childish revulsion.

But now she knows that there is a very real chance that she might not make it to that age. That she, Ron, or Harry might be cut down early. That they might just die in a blaze of glory, after all. She doesn't know quite how to feel about it, if she really _would_rather die in war.

Which would be more cowardly? Maybe preferring any sort of death at all is cowardly in itself. She doesn't like to think about it. Who does?

There is a lot of pain to growing up and one of the greatest of these is discovering the ugliness in yourself. Sometimes she thinks she would give anything to _not_be Hermione Granger, so she wouldn't have to worry about things she can't help.

But it's in her nature to worry. To dissect and analyse and try to think of every possible eventuality. Weigh the odds. Pack an umbrella. This is why she is so good at Arithmancy, and this is also why she frequently finds herself awake in the middle of the night, driving herself mad with images of Harry lying unwept in the middle of a bloody field, or Ron with his chest caved in, or Neville with his eye sockets crawling with insects, or Ginny with her dainty jaw ripped off.

She tells herself that her fears are unsupported, that they are together, that the walls of Hogwarts will keep them safe, but she can't help it. Especially watching Dumbledore bring his fork to his mouth with trembling fingers. It's a harrowing thing, that she even thought to compare Albus Dumbledore, Order of Merlin, First Class, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, with stooped little Phyllis Pennington. For the first time she realises that the headmaster is a very old man. It's strange to think about, as the Great Hall is filled with the sounds of students tucking exuberantly into pudding at the end of a long day.

What was that poem about the world ending in fire or ice?

Her dad, being the perennial science geek that he is, used to tell her about the question of how the universe will end. Because, really, what other question could be more important? This is another human thing, the need to know how one will slip out of existence.

To put it simply, scientists don't know how the universe will end because they can't calculate the total amount of mass in the universe. If there isn't enough mass to counteract the force of gravity, then eventually the universe will begin contracting. It will suck in on itself and collapse in a great big cosmic crunch to rival the Big Bang itself. If, however, gravity isn't strong enough to hold the contents of the universe together, it will slowly wink out of existence. It will end with a whimper, continuing to expand until it reaches a temperature of absolute zero.

Until the heavens disintegrate like soap scum in hot water. Until the distance between the stars grows larger and larger and the speed of light isn't fast enough anymore, and there is nothing but the cleansing emptiness of black.

Until.

There.

Is.

Nothing.

But.

Entropy.

* * *

They have a tacit agreement never to mention the events of her birthday. In fact, they hardly mention anything at all. She chops and stirs, he gives instruction. Her mouth is itching to say something, to ask how his day is going, _anything_before the bubbling, slopping sounds drive her mad. But her words feel too hollow this close to his gravity, too insubstantial in the magical miasma surrounding the cauldron, and she is tired of being told she is silly and young so she keeps quiet.

After their first session she runs to her bag to pull out quill and parchment and writes down everything she remembers about the potion. Then she sits in her bed and memorizes it. When she returns next Friday, she doesn't ask any questions. The Friday after that he lets her add the ingredients to the cauldron herself. He suddenly stops talking mid-lecture, and she learns that Voldemort doesn't always use enforced arousal to call his Death Eaters. He could, but he doesn't. Sometimes he uses pain. Sometimes he uses some nefarious combination of the two. It keeps them on their toes.

She reminds herself that these are Death Eaters she is thinking about, and they deserve every ounce of discomfort that Voldemort lavishes on them.

_Even Professor Snape? _

No. Yes. No.

_God_.

Professor Snape tells her to be gone before he returns, and she knows that if she were to disobey him, he would never again forgive her for being privy to his weakness.

* * *

Professor Slughorn is droning on and on about Gwenog Jones yet again, and McLaggen is doing something with his tongue on the dessert spoon. The air is reeking with sycophantic well-wishing all around. Hermione has to remind herself to show some manners, because all she wants to do is hunch her shoulders and stick her fingers in her ears and sing something catchy and stupid. She meets Ginny's eye across the table and manages to pass off her snort as a cough. McLaggen reaches across Neville to thump her on the back.

* * *

When she was about to add the sulfur vive two seconds earlier than it was supposed to be dropped into the cauldron, he didn't hesitate to clamp his hand about her wrist painfully and glare at her until she apologized. Then he made her recite all thirty-two potions that require sulfur vive. But whenever her gloved fingers brush his gloved fingers as he hands her a stirring rod or a crucible or a flask, he flinches imperceptibly and his top lip curls ever so slightly with either irritation (probably) or disgust (possibly).

She finds that if she works as quietly as possible, he falls into his own routine that years and years of practice have etched into his bones. It's an entrancing sight, in the way that your eyes are naturally drawn to watching someone perform an act of skill and grace.

He is a Potions Master.

He is a Death Eater.

She thinks a lot about this, because she is who she is; a person who likes to think about things. And also because it bothers her, somewhat. Not that much, mind, but in a niggling, distracting sort of way, like a boiling in the back burner of her brain.

It's like when you are in primary school and you see one of your teachers at the department store or something, purchasing disposable cups. It's strange in a way that is discomfiting, mostly for the fact that it_shouldn't_be strange.

It's strange because he was a Death Eater before he became a professor, but she's always known him as a professor and the image of him chopping and dicing will be the one she will carry to her grave. She supposes it's what you learn in the first place that shapes everything you think afterwards.

It's strange because even if he _is_ a spy for their side now, he must have joined Voldemort for a reason, and the reasons can't have been particularly commendable for his character. Then he turned spy, which must have taken every ounce of courage he had. She doesn't understand this, because Death Eaters are by nature a bunch of cowards and bigots hiding behind the hem of their master's robes. But he risks his reputation, his _life_, for _their_ side, a side that is most assuredly defined by people he seemingly despises. _That_, she is sure, can't be an act. His vehemence toward Harry is deep-rooted and inexplicable, too much so to be merely part of his cover.

It's strange because there are times when he repulses her with his ugly words and his poisonous snarls, but now here he is, brewing a potion for the Order of the Phoenix with _her_, Hermione Granger, Gryffindor Mudblood, as his assistant. And months before, he had her dirty, dirty blood dripping from his face as he knitted her chest together with the crackle of his magic skittering across her skin. The image of him is carved into the back of her eyelids, and when she closes her eyes she can still hear him whisper _I won't, I won't, not tonight_and his voice in her ears sounds like alarum bells.

Mostly it's strange because before he is a Potions Master, before he is a Death Eater, he is a man. She wonders what it is he lives for, because she is of the belief that no one can live for nothing. Sure, you can _survive_ for nothing, but that wouldn't take you very far. There must be a _how_, but more than that, there must be a _why_.

In her world of lines and sides, of definitions and bullet points and _labels_, he is a glaring clot of black against pristine white, and her fingers itch to unravel him.

* * *

Harry was never one to show off. Not until lately, anyway, now that his unfortunate fame is finally working for him for the first time in his life.

She doesn't _want_to be a prude. It's not like she goes around trying to come up with new ways to ruin people's days.

It's that bloody Half-Blood Prince. He (or she) is a sodding menace to society, masquerading as a studious, inventive little bugger, but _really_. What sort of person would take the time to come up with a hex that makes your toenails grow at an alarmingly fast rate? Granted, it had been Crabbe on the receiving end of Harry's wand, and he had been about to call her a Mudblood when Harry hexed him. So she's a little mollified. But it was still wrong. Then there's that Langlock curse, which glues your victim's tongue to the roof of his mouth. And Muffliato, that handy little spell that prevents eavesdropping.

She therefore concludes that the Half-Blood Prince is not only a rogue and a cheat, but also a sadistic, manipulative, and suspiciously secretive sort of character. She imagines he (or she) prowling shiftily about the corridors, with his slitted eyes and a circumspect drawing to his shoulders. She imagines that he (or she) would be the type of person she usually catches around after hours. _Oh_, how she would like to report him to McGonagall.

And she almost does, too.

"I'll let it slide this time," she warns Harry, trying to keep her lip from twitching.

Because he has that stupid grin on his face. Because he is jostling her arm with his elbow like he used to. Because his sleeves are too short and his glasses are falling down his nose, and she pushes them up for him. Because Ron dumps his heavy arms around both their shoulders, and turns them around to head to the Great Hall for dinner, and he smiles at her with the crook that makes that muscle twinge in her chest. Because they call her a swot, but in that way that she secretly likes, the way that only _they_ are allowed to call her. Because the atmosphere is heavy with the promise of winter, of another autumn ended too fast, pushed into the gutter before they could even get used to all the red and the gold and the scent of amber in the air.

* * *

She concludes that he doesn't know how to act around her any more than she does around him. In some ways this revelation astounds her because he is always so decisive in his movements that it is impossible to think that he could be anything but sure. In other ways, this is exactly what she would have expected, had she formed any expectations. She's found out a while back that Professor Snape tends to defy such vapid things like _expectations_, and so she's stopped having them.

He doesn't show his unease, of course, because he is as rude and exacting as ever. But she's noticed that there's a difference in the set of his shoulders, in the way his jaw clenches and unclenches, in the press of his lips.

She starts smiling at him whenever she sees him in an effort to make nice, but she thinks this unnerves him even more.

* * *

The first snow is the kind whose whiteness blinds and whose pitiless beauty is heartbreaking, and it comes in on tiptoe like it doesn't want to bother anyone. Hermione is grateful that she is neither too young nor too old for some things still, because she is just the right age to be getting her arse wet in the snow drifts with her friends.

* * *

Professor Snape cancels on today's brewing session because of Katie Bell. She does nothing but read all evening until she hears Lavender says something about her scar, and she casts a perfect Silencing Charm around her bed and cries.

It was stupid and shallow, and it wouldn't have offended a five-year-old, but Hermione had begun to like Lavender despite her bouts of bitchiness. So it hurts a little bit. In the past, Lavender and Parvati always made little passive-aggressive digs about her hair or her bookishness, and they still do, just like Hermione harps on them about hitting their notes to get decent marks in anything other than Divination.

They've seen her scar, and she feels their curious looks when she changes like heated spotlights on her skin. It's mostly healed now. It doesn't even look like a scar. In the dark, it could pass for an irregular birthmark. They've never said anything about it, just like Hermione never said anything about Lavender missing her period for two months during third year, or Parvati's weird toe.

Today Lavender says something about her scar being _so unfortunate, really, because with her posture and hair?_, and how Viktor Krum told Lavender that he would have asked her to the Yule Ball, had he not felt so sorry for the girl sitting alone in the library. Which Hermione knows isn't true, because Viktor tried several times to stick his tongue in her mouth. At least, she _thought_ that was a sign of interest. Maybe that's just how boys are at that age, thinking that the closest they could get to Paradise is jabbing their tongues in _any_girl's mouth.

Lavender can be deviously underhanded when she wants to be. She hadn't even said it to her face; she'd whispered it just loud enough to Parvati as she made her way to her bed.

She thinks about Professor Snape, and the silent scream on Katie's face when she was hitched into the air like a loose-boned corpse. She thinks about Katie's bloodless lips, and the yellow tinge crawling under the skin on her eyelids. She thinks about Katie's pallor set against the white sheets in St. Mungo's. She thinks about Katie screaming with her chest bare and black, and Professor Snape with his hand between her breasts, whispering in her ear _I won't, I won't, not tonight!_She thinks that it is a good thing that Katie didn't die, because Hogwarts can't keep something like that from the students' parents, and she doesn't know how to explain this war to her mum and dad. She thinks that maybe it would be better if she left, because then she wouldn't have to see Ron, because she knows that if Lavender told him what she told Parvati about her scar, Ron would probably laugh and agree with her.

She thinks that she is a selfish, self-absorbed fool. She thinks that she hates this hour of the day, when the light is just melting into dark and you can't tell colors apart from each other and everything is an indistinct haze of half-day and half-night, because there is something about it that brings out the worst in her.

* * *

In some ways it is the same as how it was in fifth year. The bawdy jokes, the boisterous laughter, the playful shoving and teasing. But sometimes she gets glimpses of what they will become, of the people the will turn into after the war.

She doesn't know what she wants. Sometimes she thinks she wants to cling to the past with her white fingers, to pull them all together and somehow make them avert their eyes. At other times she wants to shove it into their faces to see how they will react, to make them understand that everything is simultaneously more precious and more meaningless than it ever was, to see them rend their clothing and put on sackcloth and sit on a pile of ashes because that is how people in a war are supposed to act.

In her head there is a line. Yes, another line. But this one is temporal. It is there so she can take her memories and put half on one side, half on the other, and label them accordingly.

This pile here? This was before the war. This was when things were easy and beautiful. This was when we didn't care.

And this other one? I'm sure you know what it is. I'm sure you can smell the burning stench rising from it. This is from a time when there was nothing but smoke, and smoke, and blood, and smoke.

Most of all, she wants the waiting to end. Waiting for the build-up, the collision, waiting for her heart to seize in her throat, waiting for something to slam her against the wall.

When does war begin?

She doesn't know if she will ever find out.

* * *

"Sir, is this potion for Professor Dumbledore's hand?" she asks, because she has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the kneecap.

He told them years ago that he can teach them how to stopper death. His eyes flash up to hers from his hands. She hasn't seen him outside of class for two weeks and the pressure of his eyes on hers almost makes her forget to breathe. Almost. She asks him because the question has been bothering her for two weeks. Because she couldn't control her mouth. Because lately he hasn't so much as _insulted_ her capabilities in _anything_, and she wants to remind herself (she wants to remind _him_) that she is still here.

Really, it wasn't that difficult to figure out.

"Tell no one, Miss Granger," he says quietly.

This is an important moment, she thinks.

_An Important Moment_, echoes the labelling machine in her brain.

Maybe because he realised that she has yet to tell Harry and Ron about his summons on her birthday. Or maybe it isn't important at all, and she's just imagining things like she usually does.

* * *

There is a certain security in the walls of Hogwarts. It is silent and subterranean. It is a thrumming. It is a beating. It is in the soft hiss-sputter-hiss of torchlight, in the taptaptap of her shoes. It is a calming turbulence that she feels permeating the air. It saturates the foundations of the castle, climbing up the soles of her shoes, through thick socks, through her bones, right into the split ends of her frizzy hair. It is a pure, palpable magic, devoid of wand waving and incantations and restraint. It is primitive and potent and electric, and she can't help but feel that so long as these walls stand, as they have for centuries, nothing can touch them.

Except, Katie Bell was cursed. And Hannah Abbott is long gone. And Parvati told her earlier that her parents were considering pulling her and Padma out to keep them far away from the war.

* * *

Ron agreed to go to Slughorn's Christmas Party with her, and there just might be hope for Hermione Granger the Stalwart Swot of Gryffindor after all.

* * *

"Granger."

"Parkinson."

They look at each other with the beginnings of loathing in their eyes. She doesn't _hate_Parkinson, because she of all people knows what power the word 'hate' carries. She doesn't like her either. But something new sprouted there when Parkinson tried to stop Malfoy from fighting her that night. Maybe she did it to save their own skins, but the fact is that she did it, and maybe she just might be a better person for it.

Hermione has always been the sort of person who can take her eyes and put them in someone else's head. Sometimes she is proud of this trait, but at other times she hates it about herself because understanding your enemy is a whole new bucket of flobberworms.

"I was just on my way to my common room."

"It's alright. Curfew isn't for another ten minutes. Make sure you're there by then."

Parkinson's lips curl back and Hermione thinks she is about to fling something about filthy bloodlines in her direction, but she merely yawns, her upturned nose scrunching further into her face. It is such a_normal_ thing to do, yawning, that Hermione stares at Parkinson long after she starts walking in the other direction.

* * *

She takes a good, long, hard look at Ron and decides that sex isn't what she wants from him. Mostly because she doesn't know how to feel about sex. Oh, she knows what it is. She's been curious. But at the moment, the thought of _doing_it with Ron fills her with a fascinated revulsion more than lust. And the fact that dirty jokes still make her blush profusely long after her friends have discovered the pleasures of carnal relations, the fact that she still refers to sex as 'doing it' in her own head doesn't bother her as much as she thinks it should.

It still hurts, though, watching him kiss Lavender like she is everything he wants to breathe into himself.

Having her birds claw his face almost makes up for it. Almost, but not quite.

She blots her tears from her face before she enters Professor Snape's office. She's never realised it before, but there is a quiet, compressing sort of solace in the flickering of green on his stone walls. The stagnant dungeon air feels wonderfully cool on her tearstained face.

She finds him in his lab, and he makes an impatient, wordless gesture to her to come closer and get to work.

For a while the silence is enough, until it isn't. Because she gets positively _chatty_when she's upset.

"Where are you from, sir?"

_Now you've done it, you nosy bloody parker. _

She chops the hart spleen a little harder than necessary to cover up the sound of her embarrassment.

It is five minutes before he answers her, and even then it sounds like he is dragging his unwilling words from the very pit of his soul.

"I am from Manchester."

Manchester.

Manchester.

Severus Snape, Potions Master, is from Manchester.

She wonders if he grew up in a mill town. She wonders if he used to speak with a Mancunian lilt. If he did, all traces of it are buried under his very stiff, very proper, very over-enunciated diction. For some reason, the image of a youngish Snape (what would that even look like? Skinnier, she thinks, but with the same nose) speaking with a working class accent makes something in her stomach floor jolt. She blames her next words on this unexpected sensation, and maybe on a hint of temporary insanity.

"What, you weren't hatched in a cellar?"

Shit—shit—shit.

"_Shit! Shit! Shit!_ I am _so_sorry!"

She dares not lift her eyes as she hears his breath catch. Slowly, slowly, slowly he turns to face her and she thinks his face is probably awash with an angered pallor. Shit. Shit. _Granger_. Shit.

One second.

Two.

Three, and her heart can hardly bear it.

"Oh aye, Miss Granger. In spite of t'general consensus, I were born human," he drawls lazily in the very same lilt she was just picturing in her head. And _Jesus_. Because it's almost too much for her.

She looks up cautiously to find him absorbed in the potion, its golden hue tinting his skin with a borrowed health. They are in the final stages of this batch, and in two hours it will be ready for bottling.

Severus Snape.

The Death Eater from Manchester.

The Potions Master with a sense of humor.

Severus Snape, the secretly funny Death Eater. Who grew up in Manchester. And also happens to be a dab hand at Potions.

_Jesus._

Later when she leaves she will hit her thigh on the table leg and jolt the cauldron, and he will glare at her as best he could. She will mutter a hurried apology and stumble back to her dorm. She will poke her gums with her toothbrush and she won't even notice. Maybe she was breathing out her crazy into the air, and he somehow caught it, or maybe he saw her sniffling before she entered and decided to be somewhat tolerant, but whatever his reason was she doesn't know what to think of it, because Severus Snape just might have made a joke in her presence.

* * *

It's the little things. Like the way the clouds fold over each other this time of year, looking grave and stately in that precise shade of grey that promises thunderstorms and muddy evenings. Or the way the sunlight glistens in the grass in the early mornings. Or the feeling of her hair swishing against the bare skin of her back before she showers. Or the scent of winter in the air.

Perhaps she's being trite. Perhaps it's indicative of how young she truly is, but there are times when she would feel something flutter in her and she would look around in wonder. She is living in a _castle_, for goodness' sake. And she can do _magic_. Sometimes she just can't help breathing in for just a moment, hard and deep until her chest hurts.

She heard once, she doesn't remember where, that you never truly understand human nature until you understand why a child on a carousel would wave to his parents every time he rounded the bend. He would wait for the completion of each circuit, and upon beholding his mum and his dad smiling with the camera, he would shove his stubby little arm out and shake it madly in their general direction.

She thinks it means hope. Imprudent, imbecilic, irrational, irresistible hope. Like you can go around and around in a circle, and you see the same things every single time, and maybe it's terribly dull for you, or maybe you just want it to end, but you can't get off your little horsie because you would fall and break your teeth. But it's okay, because your parents are there waving at you. And they will be there when you end up in the same spot. And you will wave at them, and they will wave back every single time.

Maybe she's reading too much into it. She always tends to analyse things to a bloody pulp.

Sometimes the light hits the mullioned windows just so, and the air seems to shimmer with something charged and expectant. During these times she would feel something ferocious in her chest, and she can almost see past the smoke. These are the times that she is sure of herself.

* * *

She is so used to entering his office and finding it empty that when she opens the door she hardly notices the tall blond standing in front of his desk.

"What the fuck are you doing here, Granger?"

"Shove off, Malfoy."

And so it goes.

And it suddenly strikes her; Draco Malfoy is just as loyal to his side as she is to hers. And the thought slams her in the gut because she doesn't like thinking of Slytherins and loyalty in the same sentence, same paragraph, same bloody page. But it takes root like all thoughts do and she is powerless to resist.

If anyone were to ask her to just up and switch sides, she would laugh, because she is who she is and she's picked for life. But if, say, for one second, just one second, she forgets that they are Light and Dark, that they are the Order and the Death Eaters, then Draco Malfoy and she are practically the same person.

What is blood? Blood is a mixture of plasma, and red blood cells, and white blood cells, and those tiny little platelets. Blood is the stuff flowing through your veins, and it doesn't strike you how much you really have until you are bleeding out through your wrists and _it was just a papercut_, you scream, and you wonder why the light is fading because you didn't even feel the pain, and now suddenly you are dying.

But of course this is real life, and in real life you can't just stop and take a second to ponder things like this, because in real life there are sides, and there are lines. Because in real life, blood can be a Muddy, Muddy brown or it can be a Pure bright red.

In real life her side is _right_. What else would you call a side that fights against people who want to kill because of something like blood? They are _right_, they are _good_, and this is her how and this is her why.

Malfoy bangs his shoulder against hers as he leaves.

* * *

Dean Thomas is as good at drawing as he is at coming up with concise analogies (she knows this—everyone in her year has asked her for help on an essay at some point during their lives). And he is as good at coming up with concise analogies as he is at everything else. Everything he does, he does with a cheerful competence. Dean Thomas is a tall, smiling boy from Kent who believes in God, loves football, and is always up for an illicit trip to the kitchens for some sandwiches and a game of Exploding Snap. If you are to ask Dean about football, he will gladly explain it to you with none of the condescension that Muggleborns sometimes have when explaining something unknown to the Wizarding world. But this is perhaps because Dean isn't sure if he is indeed a Muggleborn or not, having never known his father.

Everyone likes Dean Thomas.

"Look at that smarmy pillock," Harry grumbles. "Strutting around like a bloody git."

"He's tall, Harry. That's how tall people walk, because they've got longer legs."

"So _you_fancy him too, is that it?"

"Oh, Harry." She shakes her head at him. He ignores her and angles his chair so he can pretend he's not looking at Ginny.

* * *

"All tarted up, I see. Have you come here to gloat, Miss Granger?"

She went because she left her quill. She has a thousand different quills, but this is her favorite quill. She went because she wanted her quill back.

If she is honest with herself, she went because she wanted to hide. Because she felt shallow and she felt like pitying herself in peace. Because McLaggen didn't make her feel as wanted as she thought he would.

"Sir?"

She finds him in his lab, but the table they use is empty. He is sitting in a chair with his legs sprawled out and his shoulders curved around a glass in his hands.

"Tell me, what did _dear_ Harry and _precious_Ron say when you told them about it? Did you have a laugh in your tower? Old, greasy Snape with his greasy cock, panting like a mutt and hankering after your precious Muggleborn cunt?"

She blinks twice and wrinkles her nose.

"Are you _drunk_?"

"_Fuck_, Granger. Yes. Yes, I'm drunk," he laughs conspiratorially, like she just caught him trying to trick her into something and he almost did and the thought of duping her just _tickles_him. There is something glistening smeared just under his left eyebrow, and she thinks she might wipe it off. He sways forward like he is proving his point.

"I'm bloody pissed. I was pissed at dinner. I was pissed when I saw you throwing yourself at that Quidditch player at Slughorn's little party. Are you properly offended now? No?" He tips his head to her, holding out his glass in a mock salute.

"I killed a man today."

This is when she notices that something dull and brown is crusted around his fingernails, and she doesn't doubt for a second that what he said is true. She feels like she is standing in the middle of a busy road, with the traffic on either side of her whipping past and churning up her hair in an invisible wind. There is an almighty drumming noise inside her head, and her diaphragm is suddenly afflicted with a temporary paralysis.

"Are you... are you mad?" she asks quietly. And sincerely. Because he really could be.

"Am I?" he sneers.

"No. No," she whispers, like it can change things. What was it they said in the fairy tales? If you believe hard enough.

Hard enough, brave enough, strong enough, old enough, never-ever-good-enough.

"Oh, but I did, Miss Granger," he leers at her.

_Jesus_. Severus Snape from Manchester.

Potions Master.

Murderer.

Suddenly he sits up and fixes her with eyes that are far too sharp and black for intoxication.

"What do you mean by it, girl? What do you want from me?"

"What? I... _God..._" she trails off.

Then she asks him, because it is all she can do.

"Who—how?"

Because there _must_ be a how, and there _must_be a why.

"Does it matter? Ah. Perhaps it would have been more... forgivable if it had been a Death Eater I killed, yes? Perhaps if I had been merciful and quick," he says gently, pondering the liquid amber in his glass. "Does it matter? I did it. It is done."

"No—stop it!" She can never gauge how loud she should be in situations like this, because her voice is ringing in her ears and they both wince at the shrill sound. "No! You—you think you can _scare_me? What are you trying to—you think it's that easy?"

She is angrier than she has any right to be because of his insouciance and McLaggen pushing her into the corner and Ron treating her like they've never been friends and the smell of blood and the taint of liquor and just _everything_.

She thinks he might be a coward. She thinks he might be the bravest man she knows. She thinks she might be _such_a fool, because even now when she closes her eyes she can see him pouring water down her convulsing throat and pouring life from his wand to her chest.

"You saved my life."

"Ah. Yes, I do reca—"

"Don't you dare belittle it! Don't you dare belittle _me_! You saved my life, and you killed this man to save many more! You are not an evil person, Severus Snape. You did what you had to d—"

"It's so easy for you, isn't it? _Shit_. It must be so fucking _wonderful_ up there on your pedestal, and we must look like _insects_from your vantage point, don't we? Tell me, Granger. Do you know what the last ingredient of the potion is?"

"Wha—what the bloody hell does that have to do with anything? You—"

"Answer the fucking question!" he yells, his pallid mouth stretching over tombstone teeth, the air thick all of a sudden with his anger.

"I—we—" she falters, trying to remember, but he is looking at her like everything is hinging on her response, so she forces her brain to go through the past week. "We added the Erumpent tail last."

"Very good."

At any other time these two words would have thrilled her but now she doesn't know what to think.

"Very good. But you see, I haven't told you about the very last ingredient, because it must be added right before consumption. You see, the very last ingredient is unicorn blood."

It takes a second. Two. Three, before it registers.

He smiles nastily at the look on her face, because he knows that _she_knows that only the very darkest, vilest, most iniquitous of potions use something as clean as unicorn blood. She wishes he would get to his bloody point already. There is a crick between her shoulder blades from holding herself too straight. There is a burden in her gut, in her brain, in her heart and the wrongness of this feeling somehow makes her despise herself.

"Do you understand? Professor Dumbledore requires unicorn blood to live. He requires the death of a creature pure and sacred in order to survive. These are the truths of this world, Miss Granger. You want a reason? The reason is that the world owes you no reason, because this is war. Yes. _War_. Welcome to the Order of the Phoenix," he states grandly, spreading out his arms, sloshing his whiskey all over himself.

He gets up in a swift movement and bares his teeth at her and God, what the hell is he trying to teach her? She is rendered immobile by his gaze and the fierce energy in his stillness, and she thinks she can feel his magic pulsing up her toes, her calves, tightening in her womb, grazing the skin of her neck, and her response to it is deliciously frightening.

"Welcome, little girl, to the _fucking_Light, where we would slaughter to abolish slaughtering, where we would strip ourselves of scruple for a higher scrupulousness, where our mercy is mathematical and our sacrifice is a statistic."

"You're wrong," she says weakly. That has always been her defense. You're wrong. And usually it works. Because she is too often right, too clever for her own good.

"Oh, but I saved your life. You want to know how I killed the Muggle? I used the same curse Dolohov did, only this time I wasn't silenced. It works far better, far more efficiently, when the curse is pronounced out loud." He is standing still but his eyes are wildly scanning her face, and she feels like a marionette in the hands of a master.

"But I saved your life, didn't I? That ought to be compensation enough. After all, I am not an evil man. I was just doing what I had to do." He is vicious like shrapnel.

_We are all bound, aren't we?_

"What do you want me to say, Snape?" she asks him with her voice childlike and impotent and infuriating.

_We of the wicked calling. _

He looks at her long and hard. Those are the only kind of looks he gives, the only ones that matter.

"I want you to stop making a saviour out of me, Granger."

* * *

Somehow she ended up in her alcove. She thinks she ran away, but she didn't get very far. She ended up back in her alcove.

Lot's wife was told not to look back at Sodom and Gomorrah as everything she knew and held dear burned in the wrath of God. But she did look back. She paused and faltered, her heart hammering away behind her eyeballs, and she just had to check, she just had to make sure that it really was happening.

It's only human.

Do you blame her for looking back? Is it her fault that she became attached to something condemned to be scorched into ashes? Is it unreasonable to expect her to rise above her human roots, to quell and quiet the quavering in her heart, to take strength in the knowledge that she was chosen by God to live?

Lot's wife was turned into a pile of salt.

Maybe there is such a thing as fate, after all. Maybe they are all destined to yearn for the stars while writhing in the mud, betraying their origins of yielding flesh and boiling blood. Maybe he's right. Maybe there is no good and evil. Maybe the world runs on the lust of men, and they comfort themselves with the idea that they are reaching for something brighter and purer.

But maybe you do blame her. Because she should have known better. Because it all comes down to choices, choices, choices.

Hermione doesn't know why she went back, but she did. She storms back up his hallway and the door trembles on its hinges as she pounds on it with both fists.

"Open the door, Snape! Open the fucking door!" she screams. He yanks it open with a tempest on his features but when she drives him backward with her hands on his chest, he looks up at her in surprise and she relishes it.

"You're wrong," she says. More firmly, this time. And she doesn't just say it; she _marches_ up to him and shoves it in his face with her finger in his chest. Because she is tired of letting this big monster of a war defeat her before it even really starts, and she is tired of _him_and his bloody fatalism. She has always been the sort of person to see the decency in everything, even if it is buried underneath layers and layers of fucked up.

She can barely understand what she intends to do, and it feels odd like motion sickness, odd like hearing your voice through the telephone and you think, does my voice really sound like that?

"You're wrong."

_What, what, what?_she asks herself as she slowly, slowly, slowly lets her palm flatten against his damp robes and slowly, slowly, slowly stands on tiptoe. His head pulls back as he tries to hold eye contact, but she never tries to look away. She vaguely registers that he has a long throat. Long. Muscled. Pale.

"You're wrong."

_How?_she asks herself as a strangled, indignant, aching noise comes out of his mouth and she slowly, slowly, slowly presses herself into him, and his eyes widen in that way that breaks her heart, and she feels his blood-soaked body hard-angled and warm against hers, and she thinks that maybe she can forgive him.

"You're wrong."

_Why?_she asks herself as she slowly, slowly, slowly brings her face closer to his. The whole thing unfurls in bullet time, and she fancies that his pupils dilate as their lips touch, but it's impossible to tell in all that black. She thinks that perhaps this might be one of her Bad Ideas, perhaps one of her Very Bad Ideas.

But the tip of his great big joke of a nose is cold, and his lips are surprisingly soft, and his body turns to stone beneath her palm and she knows that this is one of those things, those little things that she wants to keep forever in her fist. _Jesus_. She feels something roiling in her muscles as she chastely, slowly pushes her lips (chapped) against his (dry), his top lip fitting primly and perfectly between hers.

For five seconds neither of them breathe. She wonders if he closed his eyes. She wonders if she should wrap her arms around him, because she really would like to, but he might hate her for it. He doesn't kiss her back, but a breathy noise comes out through their joined lips and too soon, reality returns.

She doesn't know which came first; that she pulled back or that he pushed her away. In any case, it is over before she knows it, and they are separated. There are two seconds of stupefied paralysis where they stand there staring at each other, she with shock, he with something wild and accusing, and maybe a bit of something incredulous.

But then his face contorts in anger and she thought she'd seen him furious, but _oh_, she really had no idea. For a wild moment she thinks he might grab her and throw her, but instead he curls his lip vehemently and clenches his jaw and pushes past her to the hallway, and he disappears into the darkness.

She stays in his office for a good while. He doesn't return. It isn't until later, when she can move again, that she will go back to her dorm and sit down and try to make sense of things, but it won't work.

* * *

"Do you know how long a year takes when it's about to end?" Neville asks her, his round eyes full of something big. "This long." He snaps his fingers. Except he doesn't really know how to snap, so it comes out as more of a sad _thump_. "Yesterday we were waiting to be sorted. Today we're in a war. And we're _old_."

"Old?" she snorts. "Do you even know what you're talking about?"

"Old."

"We are _not_old."

_I'm still too young_, she thinks.

But then, aren't they all? Age doesn't prepare you for war. Nothing does.

"You're inches away from death every time you go out into the world, Hermione. How much older do we have to be? I mean, look at Trevor! He's as big as the rubbish bin, now. He likes to hang out in there, you know. It's all going by so fast. We never had a chance."

"Ha. When did you get so wise, Neville Longbottom?" she smirks.

"I don't know." There is something in the between-spaces of his words, in the silent pauses he uses to fill up the gaps between his emotions, but she doesn't care to examine it too closely because of what she might find within herself.

"Well, maybe it is true," she says in a subdued tone. "Maybe a long life has to be filled with much unpleasantness if it's to seem long. But if that's the case, who would want it?"

"I would," Neville says.

"Why?" Because there must be a why.

"What else is there?"

* * *

He joined them for power.

He wanted to grab something and keep it to himself, to keep it safe where the cold logic of this world cannot find it, to set it in stone, but he wasn't strong enough. So he joined them for power. He didn't find it with the Death Eaters, he didn't find it with Voldemort, because the power they have is not the kind that protects, but the kind that lays bare and massacres.

He discovered this too late.

Dumbledore gave him a chance, and maybe he thought Dumbledore could give him the power he sought.

He didn't find it with Dumbledore either, and he didn't find it in himself, and she wonders if he ever will.

* * *

**A/N:**

I apologize for any missing spaces between words. For some reason, the editor keeps deleting the spaces after some of the italicized words.

Link to a relevant picture:  
pics/catalog/371/1663


	8. Eight

She dreams that he came to her and told her to pack her things and meet him by the window at midnight.

Follow me to the lakes, he said, with his face distorted by the wan light.

She dreams that the wind smelled of tree bark and sunlight, which was strange because there was none. She dreams that the snow crunched underfoot, but their steps left no tracks.

The north wind will cover for us, he said.

She dreams that they watched the day begin as their cold pale hands stiffened and stilled in the morning sun.

* * *

It's always startling waking up in her little Muggle room to the tinny Muggle beeping of her alarm clock. It's even stranger to wake up and hear no one else's breathing but her own. Hermione's got so used to Parvati's sleepy, tongue-smacking sounds, Lavender's girlish snoring (honestly, is she even capable of doing anything remotely non-girlish?), and Fay Dunbar's teeth-grinding that it takes her several seconds to get her bearings and remember where she is.

When she does, she is suddenly struck by the mundanity of her room. It used to be comforting; the overwhelming normalness of it, the complete spatial awareness of where everything is and should be.

If she tilts her head a little bit to the right, she would find her bookshelf next to her desk, whose drawers smell of rosemary from a sachet she keeps in them. If she reaches her arm out just so, her fingers would brush the dangling switch of her purple lamp, a relic from her dad's own childhood bedroom. Her trunk is by the foot of her bed, and right there over the door, there are glow-in-the-dark stars and planets that she glued on the ceiling to her mum's great consternation during a brief rebellious phase when she was six.

She knows the shape of each angle of light that filters in through her window, every electrical outlet hidden behind furniture, the grooves on her walls. The darkest corners of her room hold no mystery for her.

A cost of being part of the magical world as a Muggle-born is returning to her place of origin, the incorporation with what had been, in the past, her entire world, and is now merely her place of holiday.

Two months in the summer, two weeks in the winter.

Every time she returns it is a little dingier, its hold on her ever weakening. What's worse is that the war, the Death Eaters and the Order of the Phoenix, the Chosen One, all the lines and sides she's tabulated in her own mind, once so rich in detail now seem a passing silliness when faced with the hard reality of her Muggle room.

It's a feeling very similar to one you get when you watch a particularly absorbing action/suspense thriller on the telly, one with the dashing hero with the guns that never miss a shot, and the women with outrageously nubile bodies, and you get so caught up in it and suddenly the credits roll up and you think, _oh_.

As in; oh, I have to do my laundry. The cat needs to be fed. No gunfights and car chases for me today. I've got to defrost the chops for dinner.

There is no magic here, it tells her, and she doesn't like the restless torpor that this knowledge infuses into her limbs.

The only sign that a magical being has ever resided in here is her wand on her nightstand and a stack of leather-bound textbooks on her desk, with titles such as _An Anthology of Eighteenth Century Charms, Numerology and Grammatica: Arithmancy in the Modern Magical World_, and, of course, _Hogwarts, A History_. The pile of books, most of them with hand-lettered covers, sit anachronistically beside another pile of crisply printed Muggle science textbooks that her dad has brought for her to read over the holidays.

She dismisses the discordant sensation in her stomach when she hears her parents puttering about in the kitchen downstairs and gets herself ready for breakfast.

"Hey, Mum," she says as she seats herself at the table and grabs a piece of toast from the stack at the center. "Where's Dad?'

"Good morning, dear. Your father got called out. Emergency root canal," her mum says by way of explanation, waving her spatula in a what-can-you-do sort of gesture, as if to imply that it is perfectly normal for people to be called away from breakfast to go digging around in someone else's abscessed mouth.

"Did you see those books your father left you in your room? He told me to tell you that one of his regulars, Dr. Meyer, do you remember him? The professor?"

Hermione drops her toast, getting butter all over her lap. Dr. Meyer, the professor.

Professor.

Professor.

_She_ has a professor. She has several, of course. And then there is _the_professor.

_Yes, remember him, Hermione?_the voice in her head sneers nastily.

_Your professor? Your bleeding teacher for the past five years? The one you ki—_

"_Shut up_," she whispers viciously.

"—ecommended several texts he thought would—what was that, darling?"

"Oh, er, where are the paper towels, Mum?"

"What happened? You dropped your toast on yourself? _Honestly,_" her mum scoffs exasperatedly, with an expression that Hermione is sure that Harry and Ron would recognize.

Oh god. Harry and Ron.

She's never been good at keeping things to herself.

What will they say?

Already she can picture the look on Harry's face; apoplectic, neither livid nor pale, but a pinkish, unflattering, splotchy combination of the two. That vein above his eyebrow will start throbbing rhythmically, only this time she won't be permitted to make fun of it. He will go still with shock and revulsion for a few seconds, then the reality of it will hit him and he will start gesturing violently. _What were you thinking, Hermione?_ he will shout. _What sort of girl snogs her professor? And not just any professor, but greasy, dour, point-taking, dignity-demolishing, Death-Eating Snape?_

What sort of girl, indeed?

She groans as she recalls the anger on Snape's face. She'd analyzed everything over the past week, from the way he hunched his shoulders forward like he was protecting himself, to the tilt of his sneer, to the way he shrugged off her hands as he drew himself shut and walked away.

He'd looked at her like she had just committed a terrible, unforgivable crime. At the time she convinced herself that he was appalled at her behavior because she is some twenty years his junior, and, what's more, his student. A child over whom he holds a position of authority. But she can't help but feel that his repugnance was directed at _her_. Personally. Because she is Hermione Granger, know-it-all Mudblood, and the thought of her priggish lips pressing against his sends a shiver down his spine. The very fact that he can make her think this infuriates her.

She grumbles as she smears the butter into the fabric of her jeans, before she remembers that she is a witch, and that she is of age, and that she can do magic in her home now. She casts a Cleansing Charm, and looks up to find her mum staring at the dark spot on her leg.

"Oh! Sorry, darling, I just..." Mrs. Granger breaks off into a peevish smile. "Your father should be home in about a couple of hours. You can ask him about Dr. Meyer's books, then."

"Okay. Thanks, Mum."

Mrs. Granger smiles at her. A little apologetically, Hermione fancies, and she feels a familiar emptiness in the pit of her stomach. If her dad were here, she doesn't doubt that she would catch the two of them giving each other furtive, uneasy looks. It's another one of those things that let Hermione know how much of an alien she is in her own home.

And yet, she finds that she would much rather stay here in the safety of her mum's kitchen, confronted by her parents' involuntary flinches and contrite smiles whenever she performs magic, than return to Hogwarts and face the unbearable consequences of her stupidity.

* * *

"Would you look at that? I don't think I remember what color the sky is anymore."

Hermione smiles. "You say that, Dad, but in the summer all you do is stay indoors complaining about sunburn and heatstroke and how it's ridiculous and all the plants are going to die."

"Hmm. So how are things at Hogwarts? How are Harry and Ron?"

She pushes her lips to one side before answering. "Oh, they're alright. Things are a little tense these days, what with the... er... the war."

The war. It seems so far away, now. So very underwhelming.

"Oh, yes. The _war_," her dad says, sporting a facetiously grave expression on his face. He tries to be understanding, he really does, but he's never had a taste for the fantastic and the supernatural.

* * *

She's got to the point where she convinces herself that she's forgot all about what happened when she last saw Snape. She found that it is damn near impossible to get anything done if she thinks that she might remember something.

Outside, the snow is falling swiftly and indifferently, and the few scarce trees dotting her lane are blackened by impending nightfall. Her parents are asleep. On her feet are two pairs of socks. She takes a sip of her milky tea and sinks further into the couch, her features illuminated by the flickering glow of the telly. A holiday special is playing. Something comfortably trite and stultifying to help her settle in for the night.

She does not remember how his chest felt under her fingertips, or how there was a shadow on his forehead where a vein throbbed too close to the surface, or how she was close enough to see the tendrils of red radiating outward in the whites of his eyes. The overwhelming presence of him. And how, up close, his sharp bones stretched taut the ashen skin of his face, and how she thought she would like to map the planes of his skull with her fingertips. She most definitely does not remember how his breath was rancid on her face and yet she still breathed in deeply, or how it felt when the tip of his nose rested against the side of hers, or how his eyelids_ fluttered _for the briefest of seconds, which is preposterous because _fluttering_is not an accusation that anyone could lay on Severus Snape's doorstep.

In any case, it hardly matters because she. Does. Not. Remember it.

She scoffs as the ponce on screen gets down on one knee in front of his lady. He starts comparing her eyes to the stars, gazing adoringly into her face, as she simpers and starts to tear up. It is one of those films whose scope of reality is so small that, in a half-arsed attempt at compensation, everything is uttered to the extremity of one emotion or other, an exclamation point marking the end of every spoken word. All around the two lovers, Christmas lights flare into life, and the city comes alive. A reminder of true love set in stark contrast to the tackiest depths of hectic modern humanity. Hermione reaches for the remote and switches the channel before the ecstatic couple erupts in song and dance.

At any rate, it was just a kiss. A chaste, harmless brush of lips that barely lasted two seconds. She's been kissed before.

Sure. Lots of times. It's nothing to fuss over.

Yes.

Okay.

Before her finger hits the button, she catches a glimpse of the dashing pillock bending his lover over his arm, his face approaching hers as the camera zooms in. Their eyes close at the same time. Their lips touch. The lameness of it is overpowering. There is a buzz of static and the picture is changed to a middle-aged woman gushing over her low-fat yogurt, a catchy little tune playing in the background.

Whatever it is Hermione does not remember, she is certainly not pressing her fist to her lips, pretending that the heat from her hand is his breath curving around her face, pretending that the dip between her forefinger and middle finger is the seam of his closed, thin mouth.

* * *

In half a second the year is over and she opens the door to find Mad-Eye Moody inspecting the welcome mat. He takes his time eyeing the lettering and straightens to fix her with an unapologetic stare. She shifts on her feet, utterly discomfited.

"What animal did you accidentally Polyjuice into your second year at Hogwarts?"

"Excuse me?" she asks, feeling a tendril of dislike for this man who without so much as a preamble reminded her of a particularly embarrassing moment in her life.

"Security question, girl. Don't waste my time."

She purses her lips. "Cat," she mumbles.

He grunts in response and thrusts a gnarled hand in her direction. It feels cold and dusty against her palm, and she has a distinct urge to wipe it against her trousers. Vaguely it occurs to her that this is the first time she's actually met the famous Auror.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance," he says with startling politeness, his magical eye whirring madly in the direction of the interior of her house. "You all packed, then?"

"Yes, sir," she replies. Anyone who's ever stood in front of her in a classroom will forever be a 'sir' to her. She flushes as he rubs his hands together and blows on them. "I'm terribly sorry, won't you come in? It's horrid out there." She steps back to let him pass. He gives her an amused look.

"Granger, I've been patrolling your house eight hours a day for the past two weeks. Two days ago, it was raining. I'll be fine. Go get your trunk and say goodbye to your parents. I'll wait for you out here."

"Okay," she says, imagining Moody prowling about among her mother's rhododendrons, and not quite knowing how to feel about it. She leaves the door ajar and from the gap she can see him turn around and put his hands in his pockets.

In five minutes she is back outside, her trunk and Crookshanks once again vanished unceremoniously to her dorm room. Her parents are out, and she's said her goodbyes hours earlier. Moody casts an appraising look at her heavy coat and dangly scarf, but doesn't say anything. They head to the Apparation point in silence.

"If you don't mind me asking, sir, where's Tonks? I thought she would be escorting me."

"Ah. Nymphadora's been a bit... under the weather, lately. Falling asleep on the job and such. I told her to take a break."

"Oh. She's not in trouble, is she?"

He doesn't answer.

"Erm... but why you, sir? Aren't you a little..."

"Old?" he laughs.

She was going to say important.

"How old do you think I am, Granger?"

"I suppose... fifty?" she ventures.

He laughs again. "You Gryffindors are all alike. Always so eager to please." She lets this pass.

"You're not a Gryffindor, sir?"

"Ravenclaw, through and through," he says proudly, tapping a finger to his temple. "I don't know exactly how old I am, but fifty sounds about right."

"Right," she says, skeptical. How can someone not know their own age?

"You're right to doubt me, child. I'm past the age of sleeping, that much, I know. I don't really remember. In any case, not knowing didn't prevent me from being born and it won't prevent me from dying."

They walk on in the hush peculiar to winter. The silence is not unpleasant.

"Do you want to know a secret?" he asks her, winking conspiratorially with his good eye. His _real_eye, rather. His magical eye is considered by most to be better than the natural one. "They made me Head because I've never fallen asleep on the job. Almost everyone does. Rookies, old-timers, even Kingsley. So don't you worry about your friend, now. She'll most likely be chewed out. By me, probably. But that's not any real trouble."

They reach the Apparation point, and he takes her hand and tucks it in the crook of his elbow. Once again, she is struck by his courtesy.

"You see, I don't sleep because I don't want death to take me by surprise. When it comes, I want to look it in the face." He graces her with a leathery, almost satirical smile.

"What a very Gryffindor thing to say," she observes.

"It's not just the Gryffindors that are brave, lass," he says.

* * *

The anticipation and dread she feels coating her insides as she waits in his classroom is a sort of sensual pleasure, though she will never admit it. The prospect of finally seeing him, of once again straining under the weight of his glare, twinged in a way that was horribly inconvenient and yet untenably thrilling.

"Would you stop that?" Harry looks at her accusingly.

"What?"

"Stop twitching your knee. The whole desk is vibrating."

"Sor-_ry_," she mutters, chastened and annoyed at being caught acting like a nervous wreck.

She jumps when the door bangs against the wall, and she fancies that she feels the wind of his violent entrance rustling her hair.

"Put away your wands." His voice is a concrete presence in the room. No amount of imagination can compare with the real thing now curling in the air around her, his cruel timbre vibrating against her eardrum and sending tingles of something unknown and unendurable down her bones. He starts moving around the desks, and she busies herself trying to track his location without daring to look back. A spot between her shoulder blades starts itching horrifically.

"Can anyone tell me the limitations of a nonverbal Shield Charm?"

She sees a few pairs of eyes slide toward hers in anticipation, waiting for her to raise her hand. She looks down at her hands on the desk and traces the lines of her veins running up her arm.

"Anyone?"

His voice sounds much closer than it was, and beside her she sees the muscles on Harry's forearm leap and tense under his skin. Their eyes meet, and his eyebrow quirks expectantly. She shakes her head, trying not to look too panicked. He starts to mouth something to her.

"What's this? Romancing our resident brown-noser, Potter? Ten points from Gryffindor, _each_, for interrupting my lecture. Perhaps you could spare us your pubescent pining and focus on the matter at hand."

She hunches her shoulders, her cheeks burning magnificently. Ron sticks his head past Harry to see what's going on, but she raises a frosty eyebrow and refuses to respond to his mouthed queries.

"Jealous, Snape?"

There is a palpable drop in air pressure as an intense silence befalls the occupants of the classroom and Snape's shoulders visibly tense under his robes. He turns to Harry slowly, a murderous look on his face.

"Care to repeat that, Potter?"

Her eyes widen as it occurs to her that Harry probably knows all about what she did, and he probably blames Snape, and he is about to tell the whole room.

_Oh-God-Oh-No-Oh-God—_

Her lungs compress almost painfully as her panic is dispelled by Harry's next words.

"Perhaps if you weren't such a shrivelled up, tightly-wadded ass, you co—"

"_Harry!_" She gives him a vicious kick to the shin. She is shocked at his audacity, but inside, she is melting with the relief that _he doesn't know, it's alright, Hermione, he doesn't know_. Someone snickers behind her.

"Thirty points from Gryffindor. Each," Snape says, smiling maliciously.

"What? Hermione wasn't doing any—"

"Fifteen points for unsolicited outbursts, Mr. Weasley. And detention for Mr. Potter, I think." And then, as an afterthought, "Miss Granger, see me after class."

Her stomach clenches as she looks up, only to find him walking past her desk with his back to her. The rest of the class passes in a sort of purgatory. Harry curses as he breaks his quill in his fist, and turns to her to demand a spare, as if it was her fault that he got detention. She lies and tells him she doesn't have one, and he can tell that she is lying because he aims a nasty scowl in her direction. She feels a little bad after, but she reasons that even if it appeared that he was trying to defend her, the truth is that he would jump at any chance to lock horns with Snape. Besides, it's not as if he would have taken any notes. All he does is doodle little Snitches and broomsticks on his parchment, and surreptitiously charm them to squiggle around the page.

All her attention is focused on the ticking of her internal clock, and she wills herself to somehow slow the time in her head. It dribbles away uncontrollably even as she counts.

Forty minutes.

Fifty.

An hour.

When she reaches three hours and fifteen minutes in her head and she realises that she's been counting too quickly, she is jolted into awareness by Harry getting up and stuffing his book back in his bag.

"Miss Granger, come here."

Harry gives her a commiserating smile, apparently having already forgot her refusal to enable his doodling.

"Yes, sir."

She dawdles at her table, putting her things away and hitching her bag around her shoulders. Harry lingers near the doorway, but Snape looks at him viciously until Harry's face hardens and he leaves. They are alone. She watches as he casts a nonverbal Silencing Charm on the room.

"I no longer require your assistance on the headmaster's potion. That is all. Shut the door behind you."

"But... why?"

"Because I cannot abide the incessant pleas for attention by the horde of students that pass through the hallways, and I should like to work in pea—"

"That's not what I meant!" she says, frustration in the tension of her muscles. She breathes hard to calm herself. "Why can't I help you anymore? I thought you said I was competent at brewing Potions." Adequate was actually the word he used. But she doesn't want him to tell that she remembers exactly what he'd said, and the dip of his head as he'd said it, and the twitch of his knuckle as he pulled his glove tighter against his fingers, so she alters his words slightly.

He looks at her condescendingly.

"Because you are apparently incapable of comporting yourself in a manner befitting your position as a sixth year student and a prefect of this school, Miss Granger. Need I provide you with an example?"

Oh Merlin, he remembers.

_Of course_he does.

"No," she says sullenly, a piquant disappointment ballooning outward of her chest. The feeling requires her immediate and full attention, and she longs to sit alone in her bed to ponder the vileness of her thoughts. She is determined to demonstrate that his words don't affect her so, and the steadiness of her own posture surprises her.

"But what if you're... summoned?" she says the last word uncertainly. It feels like a pollutant on her tongue. "The potion can't be abandoned at any stage of its brewi—"

"I have been a Potions Master for almost two decades. Somehow, I will manage without your... _help._"

She recoils from him, her sense of justice pricked.

"But you... you were intoxicated, and you said those things. I am not the only one to blame for what happened."

"Do you believe you were granting me a _favor_ when you _kissed _me?" he sneers, his gaze fulgurant. "Clearly I was at fault for even thinking that you had the slightest ounce of professionalism and self-respect to control your impulses when alone with a member of the opposite sex."

"That's not fair at all! You provoked m—"

"I assure you, Miss Granger, I find your _attentions_neither convenient nor desirable. If for some reason you have taken up the idea that I was encouraging them, then allow me to enlighten you. I have no interest in you beyond your academic capabilities, which are overreaching at best and ingratiating at worst. You are a horrid, self-centered, fawning little nuisance, and I haven't the patience to deal with you outside of the classroom. Now get out."

He says it without even looking at her. There is no comfort in this. This is always what happens; she feels as if she is in the wrong, trying to bite her tongue and call back her last remark or action. In the end she dislikes herself for her childishness, her unsophisticated over-interpretations, though intellectually she knows that it is not only she who carries fault. It's exhausting. And very irritating.

"Harry was right."

"Excuse me?" he asks quietly, rising from his seat behind the desk. His cheeks redden ever so slightly, and it's strange because it's almost like he's embarrassed. If she were calmer she would chew on this tidbit down to its bare bones, but her mind is elsewhere.

She gives him the nastiest look she can muster. "Nothing, sir. I hope you have a _pleasant_ night. Oh, and you can have these back." She reaches into her bag to pull out the gloves he lent her and dumps them onto his desk. She forgot to return them before the break. One of them falls to the floor at his feet and his eyes flicker down briefly before coming back to rest on hers. She feels his gaze gouging into her back as she leaves.

* * *

"Please, Hermione! I wasn't able to get any notes!"

"And whose fault was that?"

"I was defending you! He was being a bastard and took points from you even if you were just trying to get Harry to stop!"

"An eye for an eye leaves the world blind, Ronald."

"No it doesn't."

"Yes it does."

"Just because it rhymes doesn't mean it's true."

"It's not true because it rhymes, you tosser. It's true because it's _true._And it doesn't even rhy—"

"There's gonna be one bloke left with one eye. How are all the blind people going to take the last seeing person's ey—"

"So you plan on blinding Snape and being the last person with the ability to see, is that it?"

"_What?_I thought it was a bloody metapho—"

"_You_were the one who took it literally, so I brought the metaphor down to terms you can understan—"

"You're such a prickly bitch lately, you know that?"

He's called her worse things before, but it's the way he says it, with his voice deadpan and such a matter-of-fact, tolerating look on his face like _she's_the one being unreasonable.

"Screw you, Ron. Why don't you go ask _Lav-Lav_ for her bloody notes? Oh, _wait_!" She pauses dramatically and gives him a sorry-I-just-remembered smile, feeling very mean at the moment. "She doesn't _have_notes, because she was too busy sucking off half our year to get anything higher than a P in her Defence O.W.L.!"

She makes herself feel triumphant as she sees Ron's mouth drop in shock and his ears redden. She leaves him gaping dumbly in the common room.

* * *

Professor Dumbledore aged a hundred more years since she last saw him, and though she banishes the word 'grotesque' from her head as her eyes scan the lines grooving his face, it is the first word that came to her, and her conscience is tainted by this knowledge. He hands her a note to give to Harry (_our friend Mr. Potter_, he said) and she tries not to let him notice that she grasps the roll of parchment by the very tip so as not to let her fingers touch his. When she looks up from tucking the note into her bag she finds him gazing abstractedly into an unknown beyond just over her shoulder and she knows a moment of inexplicable anxiety, and she banishes a second word.

'Vulnerable.'

A third.

'Finite.'

A fourth.

'Doubt.'

His eyes are as friendly and indulgent as ever, and everything about him still strikes her as larger than reality. It's always been difficult for her to imagine Albus Dumbledore as a human being like her, with a claim to life as tenuous as the rest of them. She's always felt, when speaking to him, that he is somehow talking over her head, humoring her with his attention. She wonders if Harry ever feels the same detachment from the headmaster. But then Harry's always been special.

Dumbledore asks her about her classes. She responds with perfunctory pleasantness. As he smiles at her she thinks that he might have hesitated and it comes a moment too late, like a stutter. But then..._How are things with Professor Snape?_ he suddenly asks her, apropos to nothing. She wonders how she could have possibly thought that the great Dumbledore was in any way diminished, because all of a sudden he is tall and omniscient and _twinkly_again. She remembers gold light in a silver cauldron, and she tries to picture him weak and dishevelled, trying to force the scintillating liquid down his throat with a hand charred black. She stammers something in response. He looks at her kindly.

_This will be over soon, my dear_, he tells her. Seriously, and with a fatherly affection that she has seen him bestow on Harry countless times before. It feels odd to her, like an ill-fitting shirt, and she thinks he knows this because he smiles and resumes his posturing as the dotty old codger from the high tower. He reminds her about the note and wishes her a good evening, gliding off in a twirl (a twirl is very different from a billow, she thinks) of polka-dotted magenta.

* * *

Harry, Seamus and she have their heads bent together, studying a page in her book for a brief demonstration in Defence. Seamus tells lewd stories the entire time, whenever Snape is out of earshot. She and Harry just shake their heads. Then Seamus says something particularly dirty and Harry guffaws into the crook of his arm, trying to pass it off as a sneeze. Snape predictably looms in front of their table and castigates their group, but it's strange, because he glares at Harry and Seamus but he doesn't look at her. When he tells her exactly what he thinks of her ability to focus on a task in class, he informs the top of her head impersonally as if she isn't there.

She thinks about it later, his perceived ignorance of her, and that odd blush on his face the other day, and she tells herself to stop obsessing over it because he likely doesn't care enough about her to put in the effort to avoid her.

* * *

On the next Saturday she is plagued with a gnawing restlessness and she stays in her bed until noon. She gets these episodes sometimes, when she feels the life pulsing agonizingly through her veins, and she feels herself drowning in irrelevance. Sinister thoughts run through her mind, like what if they aren't strong enough, or what if everything combusts before its time, and they are caught unaware. She wonders how Harry can bear it, the contradiction of having so much placed on your shoulders and being a faceless pawn in the great tide of war.

After two hours lying in her bed she is oppressed by the stifling warmth of her skin against her sheets, and she is disgusted with herself, so she makes herself get up.

* * *

The morning starts off drippy with grey and drearier grey interlacing in the enchanted ceiling and Hermione tells herself it is a good thing, because when her day gets inevitably worse she can tell herself that she saw it coming.

Later in Defence she keeps her head down and waits for some sort of conflagration, but he does not even glance at her.

Whereas before he would either pointedly ignore her straining hand or say something demeaning about her response, now he just lets her recite the answer and says nothing about it. He doesn't give her points, of course, but neither does he single her out with his invective. Harry seems to notice that something is off, because he looks at her with raised eyebrows. It doesn't look like he thinks it is as astounding a change as she does, though, because he returns to his doodling without waiting for a response.

* * *

She doesn't write her name on the top of her essay like she is supposed to. She turns it in with a deep crease running down the middle of the parchment, distorting her letters. She knows that she missed a couple of punctuation marks, and had several sickeningly composed sentences in there somewhere. There is a small blot of ink where a quill stayed too long on the dot of an i. He takes it from her without a word, without a glance, and she returns to her seat feeling discomfited and annoyed.

* * *

She passes him in the hallway and makes herself greet him. She has a hypothesis, and she wants to test it. In truth she had been waiting in her alcove for the better part of an hour since dinner, hoping that he would come out of his office so she can pretend to be on patrol.

She doesn't acknowledge it to herself that he might be avoiding her, because she doesn't want to feel like a fool if she is wrong.

He doesn't glance in her direction. Instead, he clenches his jaw and quickens his pace. She lasts about five seconds telling herself that maybe he didn't hear her before she realises that the thought is ludicrous because they are in the damp dungeon hallway where every sound is bounced around a thousandfold, and there is no one else here.

She calls his name again, but he doesn't turn back.

She is going mad because he is ignoring her. Or maybe she's just going mad, and he isn't ignoring her at all. She should be glad of this, of not having to defend herself every time she is confronted by him. Instead she feels oddly wrong-footed, because it makes her think that she might have done something wrong. What's worse is she has no idea how to correct it, or if she has a chance at all of correcting it, or if she even wants to.

* * *

It's funny how she used to tell herself that she worked twice as hard in Potions because it was a complex subject, and not because she craved a good word from him. But now that she can admit to herself that she never really cared as much about any of her other professor's opinions, she is doing the exact opposite of what he instructed them to do. If she were to give herself the time, she would wonder what the hell it is she's doing, and why she cares so much if he acknowledged her existence, when she has always been the sort of person to rely on herself for her own validation. Or, at least, that's what she tells herself. If she were to give herself the time, she would make herself stop. Perhaps she knows this, and this is why she doesn't dwell on it too much.

Because she doesn't want to.

Stop, that is.

They are practicing casting nonverbal Reductor Curses and Shield Charms in pairs. Snape is going around the room, making sure that the non-casting partner has a solid Shield Charm up, as the Reductor Curse has a nasty bite to it. He passed her five minutes ago and she tried to swallow her heartbeat as his hand moved to angle her hand properly. Of course, she knew she was holding her wand incorrectly. Of course, his hand never touched hers. Instead he asked her if she actually neglected to read the assigned chapter, and she has a feeling that he knows she read it two months before.

She's done the curse perfectly since they covered it in the D.A. last year. She's been able to do it nonverbally for months now. She gives Neville a look of warning before poising her arm and bellowing the incantation as loudly as she can. The force of the spell ripples across Neville's shield. Neville staggers back three steps, and she beams proudly.

"Miss Granger, what is it we are practicing today?"

She lets his rebuking tone pass over her with a tremor of vindication under her skin.

"Nonverbal magic," she says flippantly. She almost whispers a 'sir' after, but she bites her stupid lip.

"Do I need to ask you to go sit out in the hallway?" he sneers viciously.

"No, sir. Sorry, sir." He starts to walk away, and disappointment sags her shoulders.

"Ten points from Gryffindor. Longbottom, switch with Malfoy."

Neville gives her an apologetic grimace before stalking off to practice with Zabini. She is a little worried for him, but then remembers that Neville was the one who cast a perfect Reductor that toppled the shelves in the Department of Mysteries. She feels sorry instead for Zabini, who is eyeing Neville with the cock-sure condescension of an eagle watching a rat.

"My turn, Granger. Get your shield up."

She looks up at Malfoy. That was almost perfectly decorous, coming from his mouth. He is glancing distractedly about the room, but when she looks at him he sneers at her. She thinks that his sneer seems a bit too perfunctory and opaque to mean anything at all, and if she cared the slightest bit about him, she would wonder why he is not as bothersome as he usually is, and why his movements are jerky, and why he looks so underfed. But she doesn't care about him, so she attributes these things to some unknown and probably nefarious Slytherin doings, something that involves the magical equivalent of methamphetamines.

Suddenly she is struck with an idea. She moves her wand arm in the motions of a Shield Charm, keeping it steady and sure in front of her.

"Alright. Ready."

Malfoy gets his stance ready and flicks his wand at her. There is a split second between the time she deliberately lowered her wand and the spell hit her chest when she thinks that she ought to have thought this through a little bit more.

Malfoy is unexpectedly adept at casting, she thinks belatedly.

The whole thing happens in front of her silently and slowly. The look of shock on Malfoy's face, which soon morphs into one of accusation. There is a flash of white erupting from Malfoy's wand, then suddenly it is in front of her face. A yell, a bang, the smell of smoke, the unsettling sensation of a sudden drop in her stomach. She isn't aware of being lifted off her feet until she crashes into something solid behind her, and something sharp digs into the back of her shoulder. She vaguely recognizes the bespectacled blur in front of her as Harry, who waves something in her face, saying something about counting and fingers, before his mouth rises in a snarl and he charges at something behind him. Malfoy, presumably. Someone—Neville?—shakes her shoulders vigorously, and she lets her head loll at the movement.

It is a tingle at first. Warm and taut in her belly. Then something potent and ragged surges through her, and she feels her muscles lock and her spine arch.

Someone hooks a hand under her neck, and another hand prises her mouth open. Something cool and viscous oozes down her throat. It dribbles out the corner of her mouth, and she feels two fingers swipe at the substance before dipping past her gasping lips to rub it into her gums. She feels her muscles relax. She is jerked to her feet and pressed into a moving hardness that smells of frozen earth and smoke and sweat. She tries to push it away, but an iron band wraps itself around her waist and hauls her closer.

"I will take Miss Granger to the Hospital Wing. Mr. Longbottom, Miss Patil, don't let Potter and Weasley out of here. Mr. Malfoy, my office—do _not_test me, boy—now. The rest of you are dismissed."

She is surprised when he takes her into the spare room adjoining the Defence classroom, the one he uses as an office during the day because his official one in the dungeons is too far away. He half-carries, half-drags her to a doorway behind the desk and suddenly they are in the Hospital Wing. She is vaguely aware of Madam Pomfrey's short, plump fingers prodding at her face, the dislocated itch of diagnostic spells before she is deposited in a bed.

"Reductor curse, I presume?"

"Yes. It was not intentional. At least, not on Mr. Malfoy's part."

"You've given her muscle-relaxant?"

"I had some in my stores, though they are just out of date. Their effectivity will be limited. She will need another dose in two hours."

"Let me go check my stock."

There is a matronly bustle that disappears into the distance. She waits for his footsteps to leave. There is the sound of pacing. A sigh.

"What's all this, then?"

She keeps her eyes screwed shut, and tries her very hardest to breathe even.

"I know you can hear me, Miss Granger. Stop that this instant."

She opens them slowly to find him staring (_finally, finally_) right into her eyes. A crosscurrent of emotions vie for her immediate attention, and her chest is full to bursting.

"Professor Snape," she whispers. She can still taste the muscle-relaxant potion, still feel the imprint of his fingers inside her mouth. He might be thinking that she is desperate for his attention, but really she doesn't know what she wants. All she knows is that his cold dismissal angers her more than it ever did, and she wants it to end. She needs it to end.

"Did Potter put you up to this?"

"What?"

"You three seem determined to get Mr. Malfoy in some kind of trouble. Finding no evidence to corroborate your unsubstantiated claims and being the spoiled, entitled brats that you are, you decided to fabricate your own and get him expelled for cursing you," he says with quiet menace.

"No! That's not it at al—"

"How long have you been planning this? Obviously, you are the mastermind behind this scheme. It was almost subtle enough, for a Gryffindor. I imagine Potter and Weasley would have come up with something infinitely more ham-fisted than this valiant attempt at ridding the hallowed halls of Hogwarts of prejudice." The word rolls off his tongue with a fatal irony.

"You're wrong."

"Ah, a clever argument; asserting the veracity of your claim by forcefully proclaiming the mendacity of your opponent. I suppose this tactic has worked flawlessly for you countless times befo—"

"It wasn't Malfoy. It was you."

She isn't certain if she actually said the words, or if he heard her, because he just looks at her.

"Pardon?" he asks, his voice rasping.

"I—I said..."

"I am about to lose my patience with you," he states in clipped, precise diction.

"I wanted to punish you," she chokes out, her face burning as it never had before. "For ignoring me."

His mouth falls open slightly. It is a moment crackling with life. Her view is filled with his unnaturally blank eyes and his pinkening cheeks. The silence hisses in her ears and the seconds stretch immensely between them. She remains still, urging herself to move but not moving an inch. A small noise comes out of her mouth, and the mystery, the seamlessness of the moment is destroyed. It builds and it builds like a wave crashing against the rocks and she thinks that she is at the crest of it, crashing along with it, dashing herself on the immutability of his stare.

He blinks.

Suddenly he is right in front of her, his hand wrapped around her chin, fingers digging into her cheeks. She wonders vaguely if this is the same bed he healed her in, because the image in front of her is throbbing with familiarity.

"Did I not tell you—look at me, you fool!—did I not tell you to rid yourself of this obscene infatuation? Did I not _explicitly_ tell you that I want no part of this?" he growls, the expression on his face is angry,_angrier_, and yet... strangely pleading. She doesn't answer him.

He brings his face closer, and she watches as the skin under his left eye twitches infinitesimally. His nose is larger than life this close, and if she were to bend forward the slightest bit, she would be able to touch the tip of it with her lips. As if sensing the direction of her preposterous thoughts, he draws back from her. He swallows convulsively. Once. Twice.

Strange.

"Did Potter put you up to this?" he asks her again, his tone a thousand degrees more dangerous than it was before. He swallows again.

"Does it give you pleasure to mock—to torment the _shrivelled up, tightly wadded_ pissant of a professor with your pathetic pretense at desire? Such a sweet girl you are, such a pristine little _angel._"

Can it really be this simple? Can it be possible that Severus Snape is paralyzed with fear when it comes to matters of sex, just like she is? It is unthinkable, and yet...

She is feeling that old recklessness hurtling under her skin, a feeling that Snape seems to have a special skill in eliciting.

"And you are such a bloody coward," she sneers.

He moves quickly, hauling her up by the front of her robes. When he does, his knuckle brushes against her collarbone, and a pulse of something cold and sharp and filling skitters across her skin and ricochets across her insides. His magic, she thinks.

"You have no right—_no fucking right_, to use that word, _girl_. What do you know? What _the fuck_do you know about cowardice?"

"Yeah, that's right, Snape. I don't know a bloody thing about cowardice, because _I_ am _not_ like _you. You_," she spits, jabbing a finger to the base of his throat—"Would never," she lets her hand slide to the back of his head, gripping his hair firmly so he can't straighten up—"Do _this_." She kisses him.

At the moment she isn't certain that this is _really_ happening, but she hardly cares. With one hand she digs her fingernails into his scalp and with the other she clutches at his shoulder. She is breathing out in short staccato bursts from her nostrils, and her eyes are screwed shut. There is a very potent terror churning in her gut, because he isn't kissing her back, and she is so sure that this will be a sad repeat of the incident before Christmas, but then, as she tries to pull away in shame—oh _god_—he is kissing her.

She gives a short cry in surprise, and it is muffled by his hot, seeking lips. His hands let go of her robes. She feels one run up her side to wrap around her upper arm. The fingers of his other hand are rested delicately against her jaw.

"Is this what you wanted?" He pulls back from her slightly to breathe the words against her mouth. It takes two, five seconds for her to register that he has let go of her. "_Answer_me, girl!" he snaps. She looks up at him dazedly and licks her lips. He makes a strangled noise and nods slowly, fiercely, never taking his eyes off hers, before pulling her to her feet and pulling again so she is pressed against him.

He is so tall, she thinks dimly. She's noticed it before but now its implications are different. It is a heady combination; a man both full-blooded and intelligent. Her hands come to rest on his chest, and she curls her fingers into the fabric of his robes. His arms around her are tense and alien and disorienting, and his black gaze is even more so, and his head is descending and he is pressing his mouth against hers hard and rough and lovely.

There is a clamorous buzzing in her ears as he takes her lips between his. A roiling heat in her head, and to distract herself from it she concentrates on the sounds. But the wet, sucking noises he is making against her mouth as he coaxes the blood into her lips and finally slips his tongue past them almost derails her. She slides her tongue against his, pressing it against the roof of her mouth, and the sound of his stuttered groan tightens her nipples. His hand forms a fist at the back of her neck.

For a moment her reality edges out of her grasp, and the Hospital Wing, their impending discovery upon the return of Madam Pomfrey, the bed pressing enticingly against the back of her knees, the fact that he is Severus Snape, Death Eater, Potions Master, murderer from Manchester, the fact that she does not truly understand his part in the winds of war, all of this is demoted to the very back of her mind, and the ease with which she succumbs almost frightens her.

Did she think she was in control?

How _stupid_.

How _quaint_.

"Do you want me to touch you, Granger?" he whispers into her, and she thinks that his voice sounds foreign with the fever of their kiss. She lets her hands wrap around his back, and she moans as she feels his chest expand against hers as he breathes fast and greedy. His lips slide past her mouth and trail wetly along her jawline, coming to rest behind her ear.

"Do you—want me—to _teach_you?" His words punctuated with nips to her throat. She thinks he meant to sound more forceful, but his voice comes out breathy.

"Tell me the truth." He runs his tongue down the tight whorl of her ear and takes her earlobe into his mouth, grazing it with his teeth. Something utterly wanton comes choking out of her throat, and she clutches him to her, an urgent heat building up in her gut.

"Shut up," she tells him. "Shut up, Snape, shut up." A little desperately, because she is aware that they both know that this must end soon, and she doesn't want to deal with it at the moment with her mind numbed and her lips tingling and her knees shaking. She pulls his head down and she doesn't know what she's doing but it seems to be the right thing to do, so she latches her lips around a spot on his throat, right below the knot of his jaw. His skin is salt and bitterness, and she presses her thighs together as a voluptuous moan slithers out from between his clenched teeth.

The fear she felt at being petrified by a Basilisk, helping a convicted criminal escape on a Hippogriff, being held captive by mermaids at the bottom of a lake, having her chest torn open by a Death Eater was_nothing_ compared to what she feels now, but she can't afford to be afraid now, not after she just called _him_a coward.

She read somewhere—somewhere... so she slides her fingers down his arm and takes his hand and presses it to the space between her clothed breasts.

His entire body goes still.

So very still. And she thinks her heart will stop.

She feels the tendons in his hand shifting, flexing, and she lets it go. It drops heavily from her chest. She jumps back as the glass of water on the nightstand shatters into pieces. His eyes snap to her face at the sound, a look of guilt and something suspiciously like panic on his face. He struggles to say something, his throat clicking, and she watches as his tongue moves in his open mouth to form words. None come. Suddenly he shoves her backward, and she plops ungracefully onto the bed. He gives her a ferocious sneer and turns to leave before the awkwardness has a chance to settle in.

She sits there, unbearably hot and dazed and reeling.

Tell me the truth, he'd asked her.

The truth?

The truth is she feels rather light-headed whenever he's around, and whenever she sees him she wants to lie alone face down in her bed and trace the lines of consequences to the very beginning and shape them into an eternal loop so she can finger them restlessly, exquisitely throughout the day.

The truth is she doesn't know if he makes her feel strong or weak, and she doesn't know if she likes what he brings out in her.

The truth is he makes her doubt herself because she thinks he sees right through her, and it's terrifying, but she thinks she might see right through him too, and what she sees doesn't impress her or make her swoon or anything, but she can't help but feel that there is something infinitely rewarding there, something worth all this tumult, lodged beneath the frozen seed of his spite.

Madam Pomfrey returns with two bottles of muscle-relaxant. She raises an eyebrow as Snape stalks past her in a snit. She merely shrugs. She looks momentarily surprised to see Hermione sitting up, but seems to think nothing of it. _Isn't it lucky_, she says, waving the bottles in front of her. Hermione tries to stifle a hysteric laugh.

* * *

Beauty.

What could she want with it?

Beauty will only serve you so far before it is inevitably corrupted and collapsed by time, by misfortune, by passion, by virtue.

And what could she do with it once she has it?

Beauty is for the banal.

In ugliness lies mystery. With ugliness comes pain, and poignant, poetic torture. Ugliness is unconquerable. Infinite. Ever-varied.

* * *

"Don't you lot have anything better to do than gossip?"

"No," Dean answers cheekily. "Not since you confiscated everything that was ever fun."

"Well... talk about something else. I won't have you whispering lewd jokes about sex when there are _children_around."

"We are in a co-educational boarding school, Hermione. I assure you, everyone here knows about sex. Everyone but you, at least."

Self-exposure is inevitable with the first stammer, the inclination to hook her hair behind her ear and stand pigeon-toed. Hermione has always hated appearing less than completely knowledgeable on any subject, sex included, and so she plants her feet and squares her shoulders, squinting prudishly at her friends. It is preferable to her to seem asexual by choice rather than inexperienced.

"I have better things to do than fumble around in poorly-lit corners trying to get my kicks out of sticking my hand down someone's underpants, thank you."

Except, she doesn't.

Well, she didn't really stick her hand down Snape's... things. The very thought brought the blood pumping in her ears.

"Oh, we forgot, Hermione's too busy getting extra credit with Snape," Ginny puts in, giggling evilly.

_It's just a joke, just a joke, just a joke—_

"Oh, yeah!" Neville snickers. She glares at him for his disloyalty. "Have you snogged him yet, Hermione?" He opens his mouth to stick his tongue out and wriggle it disgustingly at her.

"Oh! Oh! Is his tongue forked? Can he move each segment separately? Does his mouth taste like last week's pork pie?" Ginny pipes up, before smirking. "You know, cause he doesn't brush his teeth."

Hermione goes still. Merlin. She should skin Ginny.

She wonders how they can speak so freely about such things when she knows she could never bear to tell anyone about it. Neither can she dwell on it, because she knows that she will try to find something that isn't there as the strange gap of seconds replays in her mind. She knows that she is treading on dangerous ground, because there could be _possibilities_there, and she doesn't want to get optimistic. Possibilities that can only exist in the darkness of her bed and the folds of her brain. Possibilities that she will fervently deny come morning.

She is seized by a sudden impulse to blurt it out and make it real. I kissed Professor Snape. I had his tongue in my mouth, and he licked my ear, and I liked it.

Never before did she have anything sufficiently interesting or shameful in her life to merit keeping a secret. Her wish for a clean-cut world saw to that. But for once she does not know the rules to something, and the feeling is intoxicating.

She smiles slowly and malignantly.

"_Professor_ Snape happens to be an excellent kisser. He has very firm lips. They're quite dry, you know, but not overly so. I honestly don't know if he brushes his teeth regularly, given the state of them, but I couldn't give a crap about that. I mean, _god_. I almost forgot my own name—" Dean makes a face of absolute horror and Neville covers his ears with his hands, but she plows on relentlessly— "And his tongue._Ugh_. I mean, it's no secret that I don't really do a lot of snogging, but the way he _thrust_ his tongue in my mouth and _slicked_it past my—"

"Okay! Okay! _Fuck_. I think I just had a minor seizure," Dean moans.

"Oh my God," Ginny breathes, looking at her with awe.

Her face is burning raw and she is picking on her fingernail like mad, but it is worth it. She sits with them for the rest of the night, huddled under a blanket with Ginny, and grins with delight during the several times that Neville falls silent for a few moments, a look of horror dawning on his face as he remembers what she said, and gags.

* * *

He joined them to protect his secret, she thinks.

It is three weeks since their encounter in the Hospital Wing, and January has long extinguished itself.

Three weeks of the same exact treatment from him; the curt barbs, the point-taking, the jabs at her desire to prove her knowledge. Three weeks of waiting, sitting on her hands, fiddling with her quill, waiting, waiting for things to go one way or another. Three weeks of her glaring at him as he smirked at the essays she was sure he was only pretending to read. Three weeks of wondering if she had just imagined the whole thing, or, if it really _did_happen, if it was just a one-time thing. If she should just put it down to a temporary war-induced insanity on his part, and if she ought to just forget about it. He'd been under a lot of strain for the past decade, after all, the kind of strain that would have cracked most people already.

She is not a patient person, and in three weeks she was climbing up the walls.

She felt the hair on the back of her neck rise as she waited for the classroom to empty and he didn't say a word of objection. She knew a moment of soaring hope; maybe he didn't forget about it, after all. Maybe he didn't forget about _her_.

He looked at her with a raised eyebrow as she walked to the door and shut it, resting her forehead against it and whispering her magic to keep out intruders. When she turned to him, he was leaning his hip against his desk, his arms crossed, his greasy hair falling into his face. Everything about his posture looked cocky, almost like he didn't necessarily want to be here and he was just indulging her. But she decided that she could tell when he was nervous, and at the moment, he was very much so.

The fact that he might be nervous makes her even more flustered. The room is so silent, so very silent, and she concentrates on the sound of her footsteps as she approaches him.

He straightens self-consciously and lets his arms drop to his sides when she nears him.

She was going to say something, but the way he is _looking_at her—and why isn't he speaking?

His arms stay woodenly at his sides as she presses her body against his, but when she takes his hands in hers and puts them on her hips, she feels his fingers dig into her skin. Forever passes them by as he slowly bends his head to hers.

His kisses are hesitant at first. Polite. Almost... formal. Their lips part, and he dips his head into her shoulder. It is easy to read the message in his hot breath curving around her ear, in his lips dragging against the skin on her neck. When she whimpers against him, he moves his mouth back to the spot that made her do it and scrapes his teeth against her skin, and she thinks she might be in over her head.

Later, she tells herself. Later she will be nervous. Later she will analyse things and try to decide if this is a good thing or not.

He kisses her slowly, and she is so-so-so very turned on. She pulls back from him and he looks at her, his eyes glazes, his cheeks pink, his lips—_Merlin_—his lips red and swollen and glistening. With his lank hair, his sallow skin and his crooked teeth, he resembles more than anything a creature of the dark, thoroughly debauched and glad of it. He looks at her like he just spilled something furtive and mystic all over her, something of his that no one else has ever seen, and he is uncertain what she wants to do with it. She is uncertain too.

_Shit,_Granger.

What are you doing, Hermione? What are you doing?

Okay. Okay. Okay.

She dives forward and kisses him forcefully, all her inexperience evident in the way her teeth clacked off of his. She thinks he doesn't mind, because his hands flex and he groans and holds her tighter, kissing her back with equal urgency. She realises that it is his cock she feels, hot and swollen against her stomach. She inhales hard in surprise and... something that feels like pride. She edges closer to him and presses her knees together, her knickers uncomfortably damp. He grips her waist and rolls his hips softly, ever—so—gently, against her. Behind him, his inkpot shudders. She wonders if it is because of his magic or hers, and if this sort of thing is always this explosive. She is dizzy, she is so dizzy, and when his hands venture to her lower back, resting not-quite-indecently on the top of her arse, she is even dizzier.

She pulls back from him. He gives her that look again, the one that might be apprehension. When she decided to confront him she had no idea what to expect; if he would snarl, or throw her out, or belittle her completely. But she had recognized something in him, a reticence borne out of insecurity, a deathly fear of judgement that she carries in herself. He hid it so very well that she wasn't sure if it was just in her own head. She still isn't sure. All she had to go on was the way he ran away when she kissed him in December, and again when she kissed him in the Hospital Wing. Maybe he just found the idea odious, or maybe he was the sort of man that just took what he wanted and left.

But maybe, just maybe, he is human, and that is his secret.

If she were to push him off a tower, he would fall. If she were to force his head into a lake and keep him under, he would drown. If she were to strangle him and stick him in a casket, he would bloat and rot and decompose. If she were to tell him her own secret, that she is just as human as he, that her life is just as vivid an affair as his, he would retreat behind his robes and his sneers and tell her that her secrets hold no importance for him.

Years later she will think that it is sad that this knowledge is a discovery, for in an ideal world no one would have to hide their humanity in order to survive.

At the moment she is just confused, grasping at the threads of a thought that will not complete itself in a mind untarnished by experience. The moment is slipping away from her, and already she sees that he is drawing himself shut. Retreating.

She came here to ask him, _what now_? But she has a feeling that if she asks him, this will surely be the end of anything between them. That asking him will force the both of them to look at this thing they are doing, to evaluate it and assign it a name. She darts forward to press a kiss to his closed mouth before he has a chance to push her away.

"Good evening, Professor," she whispers, trying to place meaning in her gaze. I won't tell anyone, she tries to say. I'll keep your secret.

* * *

"But... are you sure?" Hermione asks Harry. He runs a hand through his hair with an exasperated quickness. She thinks that if her own hair were shorter, it would look very much like his.

"Yes—yes I _told_you. It was during Slughorn's party, and I was there. I mean how could I make this sort of thing up?"

"I'm not saying you're making it up, Harry. But an Unbreakable Vow is—"

"Literally unbreakable, yes, Ron told me."

She thinks of the pictures she's seen in the books detailing such things. You have to clasp hands to create an Unbreakable Vow. She imagines him standing tall and impassive before Narcissa Malfoy, the very epitome of honor-bound duty. Had he looked at her with a mathematical mercy, then?

Narcissa Malfoy is very beautiful.

Maybe she knelt to him, her Meissen china jaw trembling, her lovely downturned mouth gasping.

"Don't you think—?"*

"—he was pretending to offer help so that he could trick Malfoy into telling him what he's doing?"*

"Well, yes."*

"Ron's dad and Lupin think so. But this definitely proves Malfoy's planning something, you can't deny that. It makes sense, doesn't it?"*

She remembers him thinking they were plotting against Malfoy, trying to get him expelled. It makes sense, it makes _so much_sense. In her mind she sees Narcissa, tear-stained and exquisite, begging him to save her son.

Then she remembers the potion, and she grasps at the idea and pulls it up before her mind's eye; the glow of gold on his face, the texture of his gloves, the swift tight angle of his elbows as he chops and stirs. He can't be on their side if he's brewing the potion to keep Dumbledore alive. She wants to tell Harry everything, to absolve Snape of all guilt in Harry's mind, but she can't.

"No, I can't,"* she says slowly.

"And he's acting on Voldemort's orders, just like I said!"*

"Hmm... did either of them actually mention Voldemort's name?"*

Harry frowns. "I'm not sure... Snape definitely said 'your master,' and who else would that be?"

There it is, that hint of doubt in Harry's inflection. She can tell that he was certain before she mentioned this. She quells the little voice in her head accusing her of disloyalty.

"I don't know... maybe his father?"*

It's definitely plausible, and Harry knows this. She looks across the room to avoid his tired gaze. She almost tells him to stop coming up with the most biased and paranoid ideas, to start looking at things seriously, but then she remembers with a jolt of guilt that Harry takes it more seriously than any of them. The quiet subterranean chill. The impending deluge. It's coming, and it's been coming for the past two years, and Harry holds this knowledge close to his chest in the most intimate of ways.

* * *

She dreams that he came to her and told her to pack her things and meet him by the window at midnight.

Follow me to the lakes, he said, with his face distorted by the wan light.

She dreams that they broke through the dirt and piles of earth to follow the glow, and her pockets were full of smooth cold stones.

The north wind will cover for us, he said.

She dreams that she heard something spark like static and rip like shrapnel and she begged him to open his eyes. _I cannot, I cannot_, he wept.

* * *

A/N:

*Taken directly from canon  
** A Forsaken Garden, by Algernon Charles Swinburne

I apologize for any missing spaces between words. For some reason, the editor keeps deleting the spaces after some of the italicized words.


	9. Nine

A/N:

I apologize for any missing spaces between words. For some reason, the editor keeps deleting the spaces after some of the italicized words.

* * *

Hermione pauses at the closed door of his classroom, uncertain.

She tried not to. She really did. But she had been unable to resist her intrinsic need to appraise each touch, to estimate the quantitative value of each glance, to scrutinize each press of lip in an attempt to ascertain the prudence of their actions. In the quiet, impersonal darkness of her bed, it was possible to play through their encounters in her head with a somewhat objective clarity. Of course, all this was moot, because she already knew going in that this is the most doltish thing she's done for a long, long time.

And the problem, the _real_problem, is that she doesn't care.

She's been kissed before. She's had _good_ kisses before, the kind that made her toes curl a little and her stomach kind of swoop in that gently thrilling way. But she can't drag up a memory of ever being kissed quite like _he_ kissed her. She isn't sure if it's the _way_he kissed her; with a tentative sort of aggression, with outrage and resentment, and yet... all his anger somehow tempered by a delectably uncharacteristic diffidence.

Or maybe it's just the fact that he is Severus Snape and she... well. She is the sort of girl who used to scoff at such reckless, abandoned behaviour. The whole thing offends her sense of order, but she _likes_it.

A funny thing about this little... _crush_ she has on Snape is that whenever they are in a room together, her senses are completely attuned to his presence, and she is always aware of his location relative to hers. _Except_ when it would actually be _beneficial_for her to be aware of his location. Like now.

"Miss Granger."

Her throat goes dry. He is standing some two feet behind her, his body entirely enclosed in several layers of wool and linen and who knows what else, and yet she can still feel the warmth of his skin seeping through and sinking into her back.

"Oh," she breathes, rather stupidly. She bites her lip.

"I would like to begin class sometime before dinner," he announces irritably. His tone is no different from how he normally speaks to her, and she is inexplicably irked.

"Get in the classroom, then."

"Five points from Gryffindor for arguing with a professor."

"What? _You_were the one being ru—"

"Move _now_or I shall be forced to award you with detention for the rest of ter—"

"—can't just threaten students as you bloody please—"

"Impossible girl," he grumbles disgustedly, fastening a hand to her hip and shifting her out of the way as the door bangs open and he moves into the room. She wraps her hand around his middle finger and peels his hand off, glaring at the back of his head. If she squeezes his finger a little as it lay in the crook of her palm, it is only because she wants him to know that she is quite annoyed.

* * *

"Luna! What are you—what _the hell_ are you _doing_?"

Hermione watches, aghast, as Luna blows on the page.

She was _writing_.

In. A. _Book_.

Luna was writing _inside_ a library _book_. In Hermione's head, the words 'writing' and 'book' are boldfaced and backlit with florid neon colors.

A book that looks so old that it resembles a bound pile of rags more than anything else, and Hermione doubts that its antiquated pages could take the pressure of a quill.

If dog-eared pages make her twitch, scribbles are likely to cause an aneurysm.

Her fingers flex in Luna's direction. She wants to snatch the book away and hide it in a place where Luna will never find it again, but the ink is still wet, and she doesn't want to cause any more damage. The defaced text is calling to her for succour. She gives Luna the most cross look she can muster, but the other girl looks on with nothing but sanguine complaisance reflected in those glassy blue eyes. She doesn't even have the common decency to look somewhat abashed.

"My mum died today," Luna says simply.

"I—what?" Hermione sputters, completely thrown off.

"My mum. She died when I was nine. It's exactly seven years ago today."

"Oh... I'm so sorry, Luna," she says weakly. In the back of her head she wonders if Luna said that deliberately so Hermione can't say anything about the book.

"Do you want to see what I was writing?" Without waiting for a reply, Luna twists the book around so it is facing her. She had written something that wrapped around the margins of the text, starting at the top and winding around all the way to the bottom.

_Here now in his triumph where all things falter,  
Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,  
As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,  
Death lies dead. **_

She had drawn little flowers and vines, curlicues and minuscule hearts dripping from the tails of the lowercase gs and ps, a rather richly evocative adornment set in contrast to the macabre image evoked by the words.

"That's lovely, Luna."

The passage has a nostalgic quality to it, a remembrance coiling just below the threshold of awareness. But Hermione knows that she couldn't have heard them before, because she had never been one for poetry. Words used for their own sake strike her as pointless and presumptuous, not to mention utterly fanciful.

"I do this every year. This was my mum's epitaph. Do you like it?"

"It's a pretty verse, Luna," she concedes. "What do you mean, you do this every year? You write it illicitly on school property every year?"

"No, silly. Not _always_school property. I just like to write it in places that people could see it. Last year I wrote it under the window on the Hogwarts Express."

"That's still school property."

"Well, yes, but it hardly matters, does it, in the greater scheme of things? I'm sure it made someone's day. I mean, who doesn't like poetry?"

"Er..." Contradicting Luna Lovegood is like baking a batch of blueberry scones and delivering them in a basket to Snape's door, or trying to get Peeves to see that your robes are quite new, and would you kindly _not_ pelt me with that vile, unidentifiable lump you found behind the toilets on the third floor, thanks. Both endeavors are massively futile, and, furthermore, conducive to even more pain. This is quite apart from the fact that it simply _isn't_done.

"D'you know what I think it means? I think it means life," Luna states with a sage nod. Outside, February is trying to prove itself a more pleasant companion than January had been, and the enchanted ceiling casts a soupy, yellowish glow on the occupants of the Great Hall. She looks around for Harry to take her away from this conversation, then berates herself for her flippant attitude. Luna has been nothing but nice to her throughout the whole Won-Won fiasco.

"I suppose it means life will always prevail, or something like that?" she says skeptically, filching a cookie from Luna's plate. It sounds corny even to her own ears. "_Ugh._I hate raisins," she grumbles.

"No. Don't be childish. Life doesn't _always_prevail. Wouldn't it just be perfectly dull if it did? Oh, and don't pick those out; raisins are good for the Punterskags," Luna says like it is the most painfully obvious thing in the world.

"_Punter—what?_No. No, it's okay. It's alright. I understand." She edges her thumb nail under the nail on her index finger, trying to pry out a bit of raisin.

"Where do you think people go when they die?"

"I dunno... Valhalla?" Hermione responds offhandedly.

"Hmm... I don't know about that," says Luna, playing thoughtfully with the tip of a dirty blond curl. "Is that what they taught you in the Muggle schools? It's just a myth, you know," she says gently, as if loath to burst Hermione's illusions.

"Well, no, I know... I was—I was actually joking."

"Oh! Were you? Oh, I see! That was rather clever of you, Hermione!" she says brightly. Hermione takes a vicious bite of oatmeal raisin without the raisin.

"My dad picked the passage. He told me that when he dies, he wants the same thing on his gravestone."

"Oh. Er... That's rather... kind of him. To let you know. Beforehand."

"Yes, isn't it? It's such a chore trying to find something appropriate that would fit on such a small bit of stone. I mean, _loving husband, dearest father_hardly does my dad justice. It's looking rather bare on this corner, don't you think?" Before Hermione can stop her, Luna adds another swirling vine below the passage in the book, topping it off with a flourish. Hermione makes a strangled noise.

"It's alright, I charmed my ink so it wouldn't bleed into the next page. You know where _I_think people go when they die?" Luna fixes Hermione with a look that is a tad too condescending for her tastes. "I think they stay dead. And then after two months the Grave-Robbing Gollywomps come to nosh on their decayed flesh. It has to be exactly two months to the hour; Gollywomps are rather picky."

"Are they, now?" Outright sarcasm, this time. If Luna can tell, she exhibits no sign of noticing.

"My dad told me that's what the passage was talking about. That something dead can still be a source of life. Gollywomps can't breed properly without a good helping of deceased human meat. "

"Whatever you say, Luna," she sighs.

"Hermione, Hermione, Hermione. There's a reason you weren't sorted into Ravenclaw, you know," Luna says with an air of infinite forbearance.

"Sorry, what?"

"Oh, look! It's Sir Nicholas de Mimsy Porpington! Sorry, Hermione, I've got to go. I promised Nick I'd lend him this!" She pulls out a what looked like a clear plastic baggie of phlegm. "Don't let them crawl into your ear and lay eggs!" Luna intones pleasantly, standing and shoving the mutilated book into her rucksack.

"Don't let who crawl into my ear?" Hermione calls out as Luna drifts in the direction of Nearly-Headless Nick.

"The Punterskags, of course!"

Hermione rolls her eyes and places the last raisin she's picked out into the pile at the corner of her plate.

* * *

They look at each other with fearful expectation, waiting for someone to say something, making sure not to hold eye contact for too long. When no one speaks up, Hermione shrugs and pulls his wand out of his bag. Half the class follow suit. Unsurprisingly, it is a Gryffindor that dares to break the spell of silence.

"But sir, you haven't taught us how to perform this spell yet."

"Ten points from Gryffindor, Mr. Finnigan. Anyone else care to put forth their whinging complaints? No?" Snape looks around the room, meeting each of them in the eye. All of them look down. A few Gryffindors put up some resistance, but no one wanted to cause trouble. He purses his lips. "Get. To _work_."

Almost simultaneously, Harry and Ron turn their beseeching gazes to hers. She sighs disgruntledly, choosing for the moment to forget that she and Ron aren't speaking. It's not as if she can just let them fail, not when they had a legitimate reason for not knowing the spell.

"Alright," she whispers as they bend their heads together. "It's a fairly basic spell. I think we covered it briefly in the D.A., but obviously you don't remember. It's pronounced—"

"Miss Granger, perhaps you should get up here and take my place as the Defence instructor."

She jumps when she hears her name. "Sir?"

"Since you obviously relish being in a position to impart your knowledge to those unlucky enough to be near you," he says, looking at her sharply. "I think you should be glad for this opportunity to have their full attention."

"But, I was only trying to—"

"Twenty points from Gryffindor. If you do not keep your mouth _shut_, Miss Granger, you _will_take over my teaching duties, and I shall grade you on your performance. Have I made myself clear?"

"I was only teaching them because _you_wouldn't," she grumbles resentfully.

His lip curls. "I think you have just earned yourself four feet of parchment on the, _ah_—" he smiles viciously— "on how nobody likes a toadying little know-it-all. To be turned it first thing next class. The rest of you, turn to page four-hundred and sixty-eight!"

She places a hand on Harry's arm and shakes her head at him to stop him from leaping to his feet. She sits there, fuming, for the rest of the class, glowering at the back of Snape's head.

* * *

The scent of warmed dust and old leather. The whisper of her pyjama bottoms sliding against her shins. The faint tickle of a draught chilly and dank, as though passed through a thousand sets of lungs. Her muffled footsteps. Dark stained paneling reaching from the floor to the coffered ceiling. The faint quickening of her heartbeat and a quiet swelling of anxiety, soon curbed by practice and habit. No one ever comes here, and this isn't the first time she's wandered into the Restricted Section after hours.

The only illumination at this time are the scraps of moonlight laid out in neat arrays on the carpeted floor and on the shelves. The window frames cut the estranged night sky into perfect little rectangles, and she thinks of the billions and billions of stars and galaxies contained in those scant few square inches. Not massive and empty at all, but brimming, and brutal. Ruthless.

She rounds the corner of the last bookshelf, to where the more disreputable books are kept. She only comes here when the contents of the rest of the library fails her. She's never liked the unctuous prickle of Dark magic across her skin.

She holds the tip of her glowing wand up to the gently juddering spines. She doesn't know if it's just her imagination, propelled to implausible heights by the lateness of the hour and the prodigious darkness, or if some of the books really _are_straining toward her searching fingers. She snatches her hand back into the safety of her dressing-gown pocket.

Her eyes land on a leather-bound tome with a faded, scarlet hue. It looks different, somehow, from the other books. Brighter, maybe. Less forlorn-looking. A thread of something ugly and elusive curls just under the realm of immediate consciousness, drifting, flitting, leaving a sinister aftertaste in the back of her mouth, and she knows that this _must_ be the book she is searching for. Her fingers hesitate before it, but she bolsters herself with the thought of helping Harry and closes her hand around the book. It is strangely warm, like it has been left in the sun for too long. There is a certain... _rightness_to it, a mesmeric lure to the texture of its worn binding under her fingertips, and she quells a tremor of disgust.

She pulls it out and scans the cover. In spidery lettering, _Magick Moste Evile_. She should have known better than to look for something with the word 'Horcrux' in its title.

She takes the book to a nearby desk and opens it. A very human-sounding groan emanates from its protesting spine. In the heavy darkness, the sound is cloying and rises from the book to crowd around her head like a cloud of buzzing gnats. She stills, squinting into the shadows for any sign of a prowling Filch, or, more likely, a scowling Madam Pince. There is nothing, though, and the air around her settles into the sturdy, solid silence peculiar to the library.

A glutinous, almost nauseating warmth fans out from the pages of the book. She turns the pages to find the introduction, or a table of contents. The paper feels oddly smooth, for something so old. Her eyes scan the words of the introduction, and there, in one sentence cramped near the bottom, is the word she is looking for.

'Of the Horcrux, wickedest of magical inventions, we shall not speak nor give direction.'*

This one sentence is the best she's got in three days of research. She blows the air out slowly through her cheeks and rifles through the book in the hope that some allusion might be made to Horcruxes somewhere within its morbid illustrations appear to glisten and shift before her eyes, as if the ink is still fresh on the page, and she tries not to let her eyes linger too long on them. This is for Harry, she thinks. This is for the Order.

As she turns the pages she comes across vile curses, recipes for potions requiring such things as the eyelids of a newborn child, spells that tamper with a man's very soul. The draught winding about her bare ankles seems to grow colder and more insistent. She feels an invisible presence in the room, a witness to her gleaning of forbidden knowledge. A sinuous, uncertain rustling behind her, and—

"Miss Granger. What are you doing here?"

She slams the book shut and whirls around to face him.

Him.

Of course it is him. It is _always_him.

"How—how'd you know it was me?" she says, trying for nonchalance. There is a pause, and he looks at her like he isn't going to answer.

"Your hair—"

"Yes?" she says, bringing a hand up to touch the bushy mass.

"It is rather... distinctive," he sneers.

"Oh. Yes, it is." She's lived too long with her hair to still be offended. She swallows, and he frowns, drawing his shoulders back.

"Tell me, Miss Granger, what book could possibly be riveting enough to entice you to break your beloved school rules?"

He moves forward suddenly, and she staggers back until her bum is resting against the edge of the desk. Still he is coming closer.

Closer.

Closer.

She places a protective hand over the cover of the book. He steps forward, looking up at her from behind the curtain of his hair, a strange look in his eyes.

He'd never done this before; making the first move. In all their encounters it was she, the impulsive, rash Gryffindor, who took the initiative and leapt across the gaping chasm between them. He is close enough now that she can smell him. His robes smell like hard-fired earth, like something mineral and clay-ish. Beneath that, his skin, and a scent sharp and clean. Like the rainwater clinging to the grass in the lawns outside, and, farther down the slopes, a flavor of silver and green from the cold lake. She leans backward, her mind alarmingly blank.

He moves quickly, reaching a hand behind her to grab the book, but she blocks the path of his arm with her elbow and grasps the book behind her back. She watches the muscle in his jaw twitch. She's kissed that jaw, she thinks idly. He turns his head slowly to her, his eyes gleaming.

"It's nothing," she says breathlessly.

He straightens and fixes her with a glare that would have liquefied a cast iron cauldron.

"I suggest you hand over the book and spare yourself some humiliation."

He has stepped back from her, but he is still blocking the only exit from the aisle. The crackling silence surrounding them both is deafening, and it rises and falls to its own arcane rhythm. She unglues her tongue from the roof of her mouth, and the sound of it is wet and loud and embarrassing. She thinks his eyes flicker briefly to her mouth, but in this darkness she can't be sure.

"Professor, I—I really don't think I can do that." Her voice is remarkably steady. He raises an eyebrow at her.

"No? Well, then. _Accio Hermione Granger's book._"

"Oh, hell!" she squeals as the book struggles out of her grasp. She tightens her hold, and she is pulled forward a few steps before it twists itself out of her desperate grip. He plucks it out of the air as it soars toward him.

The seconds pile up between them like banked snow. Her throat knots in on itself.

"_What_. Is the meaning. Of _this_?" He hisses the last word through his teeth, capitalizing on the sibilant and drawing it out threateningly.

"I can't tell you."

He makes a frightening sound, an animal snarl. She thinks that he looks like that grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore, from that poem.*** But she holds her ground.

"This _book_," he spits. "This _book_ contains knowledge that even you—yes, even the illustrious Hermione Granger—cannot comprehend. You _will_tell me why you are reading this, or I shall be forced to—"

"It's research. I'm researching," she says quickly before he can finish his threat.

His nostrils flare, and she gets the feeling that her response is exactly what he expected, and that she has deeply disappointed him.

"That's exactly how it starts, you silly girl. _Research_."

"It's for Harry," she insists, suddenly beset with the need to redeem herself. "It's not for me. I wouldn't, even if I had to."

"You have an outstanding talent for justification, did you know that?"

"It's not so far off from what you've been doing, is it?" she retorts. His eyes narrow.

"Excuse me?"

"That potion you're brewing, the one you won't let me help you with. You said it used unicorn blood."

"Don't speak of things you don't understa—"

"That's just it! I _do_understand! You always say that, like I'm some vacuous little girl gadding about with things that are too big for me! Why is it that your reasoning applies to you but not to me—"

"Because I am a Death Eater!" he thunders, a string of spit flying out of his mouth. "And _you_are not—you cannot—" He bites down on his words and closes his eyes. His cheek hollows as if he is chewing on the inside of it.

"Why don't you _tell me_what you are researching, and perhaps I shall reform my opinion of you," he says slowly. She doesn't know what it is; perhaps a softening of his mouth, or a loosening in the hard sinew of his jawline, but his manner is suddenly different.

Predatory.

Electrifying.

She shivers.

"Like I said... I can't do that."

Her words goad him into action. He strides up to her until she is almost seated on the desk. He grips the edge of it on either side of her, imprisoning her with his arms. All the while he is breathing hard through his nose and staring at her from his great height.

And then—finally-finally-finally—the touch of his lips sends a jolt through her limbs, fizzing and popping down her spine, and she is sure that sparks are erupting from her fingertips. She steadies her beating heart by holding fast to his forearms, and _Christ_, Merlin, _Jesus Christ_, what a _kick_.

His mouth on hers is hot and demanding, exactly as she remembers it. He draws away for a second, and she feels his breath fan across her lips. He dips his head and kisses her with greater confidence, strands of his hair brushing her cheeks. She is heady, luxuriating in the strength of his grip on her waist, in the way he steps too far into her space until he is standing between her knees. She never thought about how different it would be with him doing the approaching, the cornering, the—oh _God_—the luring.

He traces the seam of her lips with his tongue, and he insinuates the slippery muscle into her mouth. She groans loudly around it, and the sound seems to pierce through him, and he moans in response. She stiffens and pulls back.

"Wait—no," she says, placing her hands on his heaving chest. "Madam Pince will hear us."

"How charmingly neurotic you are," he says drily, his voice rasping, sending tingles radiating from the spot his lips is resting against. He sighs irritably when she pulls back from his lips, and he pulls his wand out and waves it around the space, muttering under his breath. "No one is coming."

"Okay." She nods slowly at him. He looks into her eyes, branding her with the intent she finds in his.

When he kisses her again, it's like they are strangers. To each other. To themselves. Who and where they are is insignificant, and _everything_, the atmosphere of the library, the mundane, homely sounds of their feet shifting against the carpet, of the book dropping unheeded to the floor, of the desk creaking beneath her weight, everything just _vanishes_. There is only the sense of being extirpated by sensation, and the surprising pliancy of his lips, and the coolness of his fingers creeping maddeningly beneath the hem of her pyjama top. They are calloused and stiff. From brewing potions, she thinks. From war.

"You—mmhhmm—you—were—an utter basta—_ah_—to me in class today," she bites out as he suckles softly on the skin of her neck.

"I'm always a bastard, Granger," he growls back against her throat. She thinks that maybe she ought to punish him for it, to turn her head away or something, but she isn't sure if he would even find it a deprivation to be denied her kisses, and she is afraid that he might laugh at her, so she lets him kiss her.

His hands are still on her waist, and she notes that they never stray anywhere inappropriate. With his touch on her waist, practically innocent by today's standards, he has reduced her to a bundle of nerves. Dimly she registers that she should be scared, because this just isn't _her_, because she isn't used to being so _volatile_, but she pushes the thought aside for later as he continues to inflame her beyond herself.

She doesn't notice his fingers creeping higher under her top until they skim the underside of her breast. There is the sudden spasmodic bite of uncontrolled magic across the skin of her abdomen, and suddenly his warmth is gone.

She is confused into gaping. An unbearable heat is blooming _everywhere_, and she can't seem to catch her breath. She is surprised too, mostly by the fact that if he hadn't pulled away, she would have let him grope her breasts. She would have _welcomed_it. The tang of her nerves is more piquant now, because she doesn't recognize this wantonness boiling in her blood.

He is standing in front of her, too far from her, adjusting the cuff on his left wrist. She knows she must look a fright, sitting there in her night things and ogling him with her mouth hanging open, while _he_ looks entirely unruffled, and it just isn't _fair_.

"Wha..." she breathes out stupidly, frustration at his not touching her warring with embarrassment at her need for him to touch her.

"I am being summoned," he says coolly. She notes with some satisfaction that his hair is a little mussed on the right side of his head, and his chest is rising and falling more rapidly than usual. If there were more light in the library, she knows his cheeks would be tinged with pink. It feels good to have made the tiniest of cracks in his carapace of black wool and savage sneers. It feels like acknowledgement.

"Okay," she manages to get out. She isn't glad that he is being summoned by Voldemort, but she is grateful for the excuse to tell herself that he drew back because of his duties, and not because he doesn't_want_to touch her.

He bends slowly to pick up the book lying innocuously on the floor. "We _will_talk about this later," he says, weaving quiet threat into his words. Was it too much to hope that kissing him would have distracted him from the matter? She sulks a little bit at the obvious answer to her question, but intellectually she knows that he would never have survived as a spy had he not been capable of compartmentalizing.

When he leaves, his breathing is normal, his hair is in place,and his cheeks are sallow once again. Absolutely nothing to indicate that he just had her tongue in his mouth a minute ago. She stays in the same spot, concentrating on the texture of the desk's surface under her palm, counting the seconds until she can remember how to draw air into her lungs.

* * *

"Do you believe in God?"

"What an odd thing to ask," she says, because Harry is the last person she expects to get all metaphysical with her. But maybe it's just one of those unexpected revelations you find in people who are part of a war. It changes people, war does. Or maybe those people have always been that way but no one could see it, and war just clears the air and changes the way you _look_at people.

Later, when they are in the _real_thick of things, she will think of this moment and count it among the other strange discoveries she will make along the way, like how she will find a close friend in Cho Chang, or how she has a heretofore untapped talent in sketching people's faces, or how old Moody actually is.

"Well, do you? Like, a supreme being watching over everything and manipulating the events of the universe. Watching you poo." Harry chortles at the last word. She smiles, because this immaturity is closer to normal, and she marvels at the fact that _this_boy is the Chosen One.

"I don't know. I mean, I thought I did before, in a sort of passing way. Besides, if God did exist, I think he'd have better things to do than just watch us poo."

"Yes, but he's _omniscient_, isn't he? He can't help _knowing_ exactly when each of us are taking a shit, and he can't help knowing what that looks like, because he knows _everything_."

"You _know_what the word omniscient means?" she says, her face incredulous.

"What am I, a savage? Me _knowing_things isn't some unbelievable spectacle. It's not like I went clomping around with my head half up my arse during the Triwizard Tournament, or in the Chamber of bloody Secrets, or that time—"

"Ah. Welcome to the wonderful world of knowing, Harry Potter," Neville butts in, plopping himself on the couch with a very serious look on his face.

"You lot are full of shit."

"Oh, don't be upset, Harry. If you wanted this to be a serious conversation, then you shouldn't have brought up the word poo. So, Neville. Do _you_believe in God?"

"Hmm. Well, I think God, if he does exist, would be benign and indifferent. You know? I don't like the idea of some invisible force directing the flow of our actions, it's... unpalatable."

"But his nature exists independently of your beliefs, doesn't it? Just because you think he should be—what's it? Benignly indifferent?—doesn't mean he is. If he even really _does_exist," she says, prodding the cushions to keep her fingers busy.

"So you _do_believe in God, then?" Harry asks her.

"No... I—Look. This isn't the sort of thing you can just... _decide_. This is one of those existential questions you'll spend the rest of your life pondering, and you can die without ever being sure."

"That's Hermione's way of avoiding questions," Neville tells Harry, and the two of them exchange knowing, amused looks.

"I am _not_—okay. I don't believe in God. Maybe. See, I don't like the idea of some giant man controlling us either, but if there isn't a God, then what are we but bags of bones and hair and nails and chemical reactions and various neuroses? What's to stop us from just, I don't know, just quitting on the whole morality thing and living like animals? There has to be some standard, some _universal_standard of behavior, and right and wrong. I suppose... I suppose believing in God is one way of doing that."

"Yeah." Harry nods his head slowly. "It's almost like we lose either way. I just... I don't see how I _can_ believe in God. With all this..." He gestures helplessly to indicate the empty common room, as if all the heaviness of war can possibly be contained within its walls. "I don't see how I _can't_either, if that makes sense. I mean, what is all this for, if not for some greater purpose?"

He runs a hand through his hair, and she is overrun with a feeling of wistful remembrance, as if all this—the conversation, the honeyed light gleaming to a point in Harry's glasses, the strange quiet of the common room—has happened before. The whole thing is superficially strange, because Harry isn't the sort to talk through things, but there is an underlying sense that things are already in place, and they are just acting things out like markers in a script. It's a feeling she finds indefinable and yet, vaguely unsettling.

"I think..." Neville begins slowly, chewing on his lip. "I think we make our own purpose. No—hear me out, you two. It's not just the big things we're fighting for. We can't let things get... _mathematical_. Yes, there's the greater good and all that, but there's the small things too, like now. The three of us. We went from God watching us poo—yeah, I heard that—to... I dunno... pondering our purpose in life. It's things like that, yeah? Little things like talking with your friends. Things that maybe we'll all forget about in three years, or two days, but at the moment you feel that life's... well. Beautiful. It's little things like that that make death not seem so terribly meaningless, when it comes."

She and Harry exchange one of their practiced looks, then simultaneously turn to Neville.

"What?" he asks, a look of suspicious alarm on his face.

"You disgust me, Neville," Harry laughs, and his laugh, too, pierces her with a feeling of nostalgia. It sounds old and used, like a battered token of a lost golden age.

"You know," she says, tapping a finger to her lips. "I think Luna was going on about something like that to me the other day. Something about Grave-Robbing Whompers, and how they feed on carcasses, and how that somehow symbolizes something very profound."

"It was Gollywomps. Not Whompers."

"How do you know that?"

"Luna told me," Neville says simply.

"There is a lot of wisdom in the things that come out of Luna Lovegood's mouth," Harry says with the air of someone imparting a spot of hard-won good sense.

When does war begin?

When does childhood end?

She thinks that there isn't necessarily a line between the two. Sometimes there is overlap, and you can remain a child long into the tides of war. Sometimes the two don't meet at all, and you can grow old without ever having charged into battle.


	10. Ten

A/N:

I apologize for any missing spaces between words. For some reason, the editor keeps deleting the spaces after some of the italicized words.

* * *

At the third Apparition lesson he trails his fingers across the back of her hand as he passes her, and she gasps in surprise. She finds a note in her pocket at the end of it, and she tells Harry she has to head off to the library. She keeps fingering the note in her pocket, giddy with the _naughtiness_of what she is doing, and trying to prove to herself that this isn't one of her rare daydreams.

She hasn't seen him, hasn't really _seen_him for nine days now, but she was afraid of seeming needy, or clingy, or any one of those adjectives she's heard used to describe bothersome girls, so she made herself wait for some indication of continued interest from him.

As she climbs the flights of stairs to the fifth floor, it suddenly occurs to her that he might not be asking to meet her for the reasons she thinks he is. He isn't some frivolous, lust-addled teenager, after all. Soon the silly smile on her face is replaced by an anxious grimace, and she has half a mind to turn back and pretend she never got the note.

He grabs her wrist when she passes the tapestry, and she would have shrieked had he not plastered his palm over her mouth. She nips at the pad of his forefinger in retaliation. The salt of his skin melts against her tongue, and he draws his hand back once they are safely ensconced in the cold cage of stone and shadows.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he growls low and annoyed at her.

He doesn't mention the book again, but from the way he is _attacking_her mouth, she doesn't think he's forgot. She wanted to tell him earlier that it isn't what he thinks, that she wasn't withholding information because she didn't trust him, but she doesn't know how to bring it up without digging herself further in.

He flips them suddenly so he is the one with his back pressed into the wall, his knees bent to allow her to reach his mouth. His hands press into the small of her back, pressing all of her into him, and she thinks oh _hell_, oh _hell_, because they are in an alcove cut off only by a tapestry and she doesn't know if she is ready for the intimacy of their chests rising and falling in tandem, and this is why she pulls back.

He is looking at her in a way that makes her think of secrets, and of the wooziness in her head, and the throbbing, aching life pounding through all of her, and it's strange because they are always enveloped in some half-dim, half-hazy suspension of light whenever they do this. It's strange because the man in front of her now, with his half-lidded eyes and the slackness in his jaw, this man is so different from her Defence professor, and she doesn't know what to make of it. He doesn't speak. He just looks at her, his hands fisting into the back of her robes, waiting for her to make a move.

_Alright, Granger. _

She cannot bear the slowness of the moment, and so she crashes her open mouth onto his, pressing her breasts against his chest. It is the kind of tearing kiss with teeth-clacking and breath-stealing. She feels his cock between them, and the sheer power of _awareness_ makes her eyelids fly open and pushes a mewling, ragged sound from her throat. She doesn't know why she wasn't expecting it, when it had happened before, and it was only _natural_, but the fact is that he is Severus Snape, Potions Master, Death Eater, and his _penis_ is at the moment gorged with blood because of _her_, and that is what is surprising.

He responds to the noise she makes with something shallow and gasping and breathy. His hands squeeze her waist, then travel lower and lower until the heat of his palms are pressing into her bum, and he swivels his hips against hers. Their tangled moans are bluntly provocative when bounced against the close stone walls. She is wishing for his touch to press against other parts of her. She is dreading his touch against other parts of her.

She wants him, she _wants_him fervently, and her knickers are chafing and damp, and she is terrified of where this is going, and of where she will let this go, if she doesn't get out.

"Essay," she blurts out. He raises his eyebrows at her, still not speaking. She flushes hot, and the pressure in her chest is getting hard to take.

"I have to... er... write an essay. Yes. It's not due until next week, but I have prefect duties, and other... things." The corner of his lip twitches as if he is going to laugh, or sneer, though she thinks it is probably the latter.

She flaps out of the tapestry, dithering for a few seconds in front of it, wondering if it would be rude to just leave him there. But then he pushes it aside and emerges from the darkness with that familiar scowl on his mouth, and he gives her a look that makes her feel all kinds of stupid. She stalks off, blushing all the way to the common room. When she gets to her bed, she ignores Parvati's prying (_ooh, what happened to you, Hermione?_) and yanks her hangings shut, shoving her face into the coolness of her pillow.

* * *

On the first of March the sky splits open with an implausible brightness, and the muddy grounds all around the castle gleam like new. She watches the fractured sunlight glint bronze and alive in Ron's hair, so vivid against his pale face. She clings to his hand, trying to knead some of her warmth into it, and thinks that she will forgive him for every single nasty thing he's said to her, if only he (_please, please_) wakes up.

* * *

She pushes the air past the gaps between her clasped fingers, and wonders that her own two hands don't fit together properly. There are spaces in between the soft flesh of her pressed-together palms, and her knuckles catch and bump against each other awkwardly as she cracks them.

She read somewhere, in one of her Dad's astronomy books, that every atom in the universe, every atom in your body comes from the death of a star, and the atoms in your right hand could have come from a star say, ten thousand light years away from the star that produced the atoms of your left.

There is something in this thought, something that feels like a revelation, because she thinks a bit of this truth has to do with why there is unhappiness in the world.

"I think," she begins tentatively, her voice rather louder than it needs to be. "I think I should head down to the kitchens for some ginger-lemon cremes."

Parvati looks at her strangely. "Okay, Hermione. Erm... good on you, I suppose?"

Hermione clears her throat. "Well. Do you lot want me to bring up anything for you?"

There is silence for almost twelve seconds. Almost, but not quite.

"See if they have any of those chocolate-dipped things, would you?" Lavender says without looking up from painting her toenails. Her voice is a bit higher pitched than usual.

"Sure," Hermione replies, pushing her blankets off her feet.

There are six billion people, each alive, each wanting his own kind of peace, and if her own two hands don't fit together perfectly, how is it possible that six billion people can live together without conflict? Each person hauls the great sorrow of individual consciousness, of the wonderful torment of life's intricacies, the birthright to oxygen and freedom and passion and the little things too, like Neville said, and it is impossible for each person to comprehend that every other person is as real as they are. That each person's prerogative to life has equal value.

Maybe this is why wars start. Maybe wars don't really begin anywhere, but sort of just burst out from the smallest thing, like a misunderstanding. It is ever so easy to misunderstand things, after all. Twenty-six letters in the English alphabet alone; an infinite number of combinations of sound and expression, of interpretation, and of inquiry.

* * *

At the moment she would give anything to understand why Snape is avoiding her. She's gone back over her actions for the past two weeks, and has found nothing incriminating in her memories. Maybe she's grossly misinterpreted things, and he's got his fill of her and now things are supposed to go back to normal. She is tired of second-guessing herself, and tired of not knowing the rules. Most of all she is tired of this start-and-stop, start-and-stop thing they are going on, and she is afraid that she is tired enough to just let it go. She tells herself that it doesn't matter, that what they are doing is wrong anyway, and that they have to stop somewhere, so she might as well get out early.

The thing is, she thought that the intensity of the feelings he arouses in her would go down with time. But it doesn't. It just _doesn't_.

* * *

The double doors burst open and the Entrance Hall is soaked in a milky twilight haze that would have been beautiful, had Hermione been paying attention to the scenery. She gives a start as she notices the silhouette, a cutout of black outlined in sooty blue-black. Then her heart slides back into its normal pace as she recognizes who it is. She might have surprised herself with how instantly she recognized his form, but she is busy wondering what he could possibly be doing on the grounds at this hour.

"Professor?"

As he steps into the Entrance Hall, the doors slam shut behind him, and the cool night air creeps into the high corners and disappears. There is a mutinous set to his shoulders, a potent anger creaking in his bones, and he walks past her to the dungeons.

"Professor?" she calls after him. Then, "Snape!" she shouts as he retreats into the darkness. Her voice lingers pathetically in the largeness of the room, and she is alone.

The double doors open again. Quietly, this time. Timidly. Another silhouette, this one slightly taller, but stooped and weary.

"Headmaster?"

His head snaps up at her voice, and it's the oddest thing, because she never thought it was possible to catch Albus Dumbledore unawares.

"Miss Granger, good evening. What are you doing here?"

"Patrolling, sir."

"Of course, of course," he says good-naturedly. "Have you, by any chance, seen Professor Snape come this way?"

"Yes, sir. I think he went to the dungeons."

"Ah, yes, thank you, my dear. Of course. The dungeons. Of course."

Dumbledore sweeps past her in the same direction that Snape went, all the while muttering _of course, of course, of course._

* * *

He has set them in pairs once again, and she spies him out of the corner of her eye with his chin resting in his palm at his desk. It is an unusual pose for him; she rarely sees him without his spine so straight that she thinks it might break, or without that mask of impassiveness on his face. If it even _is_a mask. Sometimes she is sure that he feels nothing at all, that maybe she was wrong about him, and perhaps at his core he is as cold and dead as he seems on surface. But then she would remember how the tips of his fingers were warm as they traced their way down her throat, across the span of her shoulders and down the length of her arm. And how his breath was heavy with moisture and the promise of building heat. And how the salacious gleam in his eyes as he dragged them down her body awakened a rival thirst in hers.

But even then... even when she was panting with that unknown yet irresistible pressure in her chest, in her groin, even then he would do something to show her that he was in control, and that however high the flames leapt in him, he could always kill them with a shuttering of his eyelids, and a flick of his robes, and a sneer for good measure. It is infuriating. It is terribly arousing.

And this is why she is alarmed when she sees his head sink into his hand, his fingers digging into his thin cheek, like he doesn't _care_if everyone sees him looking so tired, like he might not make it to the end of the year.

This is why she lingers after class, and waits until the door closes. She tries not to think of what they've done in this very classroom, the last time she stayed after like this. He straightens in his seat, a splotch of red on the spot where his chin rested against his hand. She stares at it instead of looking at his eyes.

"We need to..."

We need to _what_?

"We need to stop," she finishes lamely, without preamble.

"Stop what, Miss Granger?" She thinks that maybe she should have qualified what she meant, but she knows that he is quite possibly the most intelligent person she knows, and there is no way he doesn't understand what she means.

"You know what I mean."

"I assure you that I haven't the faintest idea," he sneers. She closes her eyes and concentrates on the sound of her breathing.

"You want me to say it, then? Fine. I can do that. I was... I was selfish, and stupid, and you took advantage of that—" his top lip curls up even higher at this— "and we need to stop this... _thing_we started."

She doesn't know if they have already stopped even before she asked, because she hasn't felt his touch in what seems like months. She hates leaving loose threads hanging, though.

He traces a finger around his thinly pressed lips, and she labors under the weight of his stare. It's worse like this; when he just looks at her. When he glares, she knows he is angry, and she can brace herself against his attack, or plan a line of defense. But when he is just looking at her, like this, she is left feeling discomfited and utterly confused.

"Why, Miss Granger, I wasn't aware that we _started_anything."

She is bewildered momentarily, even though she told herself that this is what she should expect. But perhaps the single thing they have in common is their disdain for weakness, so she pulls herself together.

"Of course, sir." She gathers her things and holds them to her chest and ducks her head so her hair excludes him from her field of vision and leaves.

* * *

"So what's up with you and Snape?"

"What? Nothing's up. What are you talking about?" Her heart does something between a skip and a stutter, and she rushes out her words in one big breath.

"Oh. I didn't mean to—it's just that he seems to be picking on you more than usual." Ron's tone is gently soothing. Tentative. They haven't quite swung back into the usual pace of things, and they are each careful with their words to the other.

"I never knew you were so observant," she says slowly, making sure to smile so he knows it is a joke.

"Shut up," he mutters, looking down at his lap and smiling, and it's almost close to normal. "Look. Just tell me, yeah? If you need any help dealing with him."

She's missed this _so_much, their ease with each other, and not having to find hurt in every other sentence.

"Okay, Ron. But really, it's nothi—"

"Miss Granger, I thought I taught you a lesson about the consequences of _whispering_with your little paramours in my class."

Everyone's heads turns toward the icy drawl from the front of the room. The silence is punctuated by sounds of Slytherins trying not to laugh. Snape turns an indulgent gaze on them before leveling his noxious sneer back on her. Ron looks at her as she places a hand on his forearm.

"But Hermione, he—"

"No, Ron," she hisses lowly into his ear.

"I suggest you do as your sweetheart says, Mr. Weasley," Snape says with a sickeningly false graciousness to his tone. "Ten points from Gryffindor, from each of you."

She avoids his gaze for the rest of the class, and meets his eyes only once, briefly, when she gets up from her seat to leave.

* * *

It was a distraction. That's all it was. She was stressed. She gave in because she is young, and the thrill of being wanted was new and heady and made her feel like...

Like...

Like something burning. And alive. And just... it was wonderful.

And _he_ did it because she understands him to be one of those people who cannot sacrifice irresolutely, or sin half-heartedly, or do _anything_without throwing the whole of himself under the weight of it. He is the type of man to make Unbreakable Vows, and there is an autonomy to his tragedy that tugs on some buried part of her.

She wonders if she can just let this thing die without ever having felt his hands on her body, and then she tells herself that there is nothing to let die, because it's been dead weeks ago.

* * *

Draco Malfoy is a pale little boy getting lost in the sheets of his bed.

Hermione doesn't know what brought her here. Maybe it was the same sort of fascination that makes people slow at a car crash to survey the carnage. Maybe it was that unacknowledged human obsession with death and all its accoutrements. In any case, she found herself walking to the Hospital Wing one night after patrol. She didn't really plan it, but she is here now.

She feels a strange, unbalancing sort of sympathy for Malfoy, and she quickly pushes it away to the back of her head, to that dark junction where other disconcerting things are stored.

Harry told her how Snape came bursting in through the door. She pictures him now; angry and worried. He had saved her life not because he could not stand the thought of her death, but because he had been doing his job. She holds no illusions about that.

But it was different with Malfoy.

She'd thought before, abstractly, how much Malfoy looked like his father. She realizes now that she was wrong. Lucius Malfoy's face is more... conniving, and much more patrician.

There is a sharp imperturbability to Malfoy's features. Once shucked of his scornful sneers, there is an almost entrancing delicacy to the bow of his lip, and the narrow turn of his jaw. There is far more of his mother in his face than she thought.

She wonders if Malfoy has a scar like hers. She leaves before he wakes up and the animosity has a chance to settle in.

* * *

She taps her planner and watches her schedule rearrange itself into color-coded categorization in front of her, and smiles with grim satisfaction at the anticipation of two week's worth of homework. _This_ small part of her life, at the very least, is under her control.

* * *

There is a story that begins, as most stories do, with a choice.

There was darkness, and then there was light. There was the primordial soup, and then there was life. Sometime during that span of years, there was a man, a woman, a treacherous serpent, and a fruit laden heavy and ripe with the promise of knowledge.

It was a choice between the writhing, attenuated, ephemeral mass of complications that is life. _Real_ life, with all its imperfection and its sharp edges, with all the risks of stubbing your little toe against the foot of the bed or breaking your wrist or mangling your heart, with all the _little things_, those few little _good_ things that are wretchedly few and far between. A choice between the burn of oxygen in your lungs, and the anodyne of ignorance. Between the strum of perdition and the _certainty_of safety, and of deep sleep, and the knowledge of waking up whole in the morning.

The choice should have been an easy one. It should have been self-fucking-evident, but it isn't.

She made the choice to _stop_. She made herself forget him, and his kisses, and the gripping immediacy of _wanting_him so much.

So why—_why?_—then, is she here?

"Snape?" she calls, stepping into his office. The door was ajar when she passed it, and she had been unable to stop the motions of her legs.

She follows the sound of breaking glass into his lab. She opens the door and squints into the darkness and gasps at the wreckage she finds there. He is in the center of it all, squatting on the floor with his back turned to her. He doesn't respond when she calls his name again, and she thinks he might be gazing into some intact internal world of his, and that he didn't hear her.

She really should leave.

"I trust you, you know," she states flatly to his back. She thinks this is what she came to say, but she is still here.

"Is that so," he answers without looking at her. He doesn't seem surprised to hear her voice.

"There are some things that I can't tell you. But that doesn't mean I don't trust you. I think you are an honourable man." She pushes these words right past the uncertainty thrumming in her gut.

"Our ideas of honour differ." At another time he would have said this with disdain, but now he just says it like it is the most true thing in the world, and it is.

"Honour is... honour is living and dying for what you believe in, and isn't that what you're doing?"

He gives a short, fake laugh.

"Honour is to be useful without vanity. Anything else is just vague chatter."

"I think you have a very distorted view of reality."

"And I think you are a callow little thing. I'm surprised you still think I am honourable, given that I am consumed with lust for you."

She ducks her head to hide the flush on her cheeks. The room is silent except for the scuffing of the toe of her left shoe against the instep of the other, and a steady drip-drip-drip as the potion ebbs down the drain.

"Did you do this?" she asks, her voice hewing at the quiet. She gestures at the destruction in his lab, and the watery golden gleam spreading over the stone floor. The answer, of course, is yes, because no one else comes in here but him. What she really wanted to ask him was _why_, but she is afraid of what he might respond with.

He turns to look over his shoulder at her. There is an almost nacreous gleam in his rimmed-raw and watery eyes, and his face is streaked with dirt. The muscle under his left cheekbone twitches when he blinks. She thinks that she does not care to know which of his masters he has just returned from.

"It was inexcusable and unconscionable," he says distantly.

"What do you mean?"

"You want me to say it, then? Fine. I can do that," he smirks fiendishly, throwing her words back at her. He stands up slowly and approaches her. His feet leave uneven, ridged imprints on the mucky floor. He is limping.

"You were selfish and stupid." He stops until he is too close for her to be able to look into his eyes without tilting her head back, and she thinks that she hates it when she has to do this with Ron, or Seamus, or any of her other tall friends, but she doesn't mind it with him.

"And I took advantage of it." It sounds like a confession. He brings a hand up to her cheek and skims his knuckles down the curve of her jaw. The grit on his skin scratches against hers. He watches its trail down her face.

"I don't care," she says defiantly. She places a hand on his neck and tries to pull him down so she can taste his mouth, but he resists, bracing himself against her and wrapping his hands around her waist. It's ridiculous how much she's missed his the feel of his hands on her.

"Severus," she whispers before she can stop herself. She can almost feel his bones lock, the tug in his muscles as he freezes.

"Severus," she says again, with the air of a child testing out the syllables of a new word. The tension seeping from him is thick in the air around them. There is something very personal in a name. In _his_name, with all its history.

"Let me touch you," she sighs into him. She wants _him_ to touch _her_, but she doesn't have quite enough courage to say that out loud. Instead, she settles for the next best thing. They are pressed together now, and she feels his chest rising against hers when he breathes in. There is the longest pause, and then—

"I shouldn't... we shouldn't—"

"No. We shouldn't."

He straightens, and she knows a moment of fear as she thinks that he will walk away and leave her here to stew in her own shame.

But he doesn't.

His black stare knifes through the pall of darkness with a pitiless efficiency. He looks almost angry. Infuriated. His mouth is drawn white and stiff, the lines around them carved into twin brackets of disapproval. He looks so different, so unrecognizable from the man whose moist, warm lips molded against hers so long ago. She clings to the fact that he still hasn't left. His hands drop from her waist, and she watches as he flexes them at his side. Words like metacarpals and proximal phalanges flit through her head.

She places her hands on his chest. He looks at her with an air of aloof compliance. There is a delicious self-destruction in this; in his cold reticence, in the weave of his robes under her fingertips, in the intimacy of having her palms resting against his ribcage, in the absence of his arms around her. She is reminded once again of his mortality, of his unexpected _frailty_, and of his need to disunite the facets of his existence, to exist in two separate forms. She indulges herself with the thought that, with her, _his_lines are muddied and blurred, just like hers are with him.

Later, she will tell herself to stop being such a silly twit. That she shouldn't be so... _stricken_with him.

She wants to taste it again, his name on her lips.

"Severus," she whispers. His chest rises under her hands as he breathes in hard through his nose.

She smoothes her palms up to his shoulders, pressing down slightly on the curves of his muscles. She slides them under the edges of his teaching robes and moves them down his arms until his robes fall with a soft, sensuous _woosh_to his feet. Still his hands remain at his sides.

She thinks this is the most naked she's seen him. She is practically choking on all the expectation crackling in the air, and her movements are unsure and awkward but she makes her hands move to that first button. Her toes curl in her socks as she slips it through its hole. She can almost hear his flesh and sinew moving together as his fists clench. She moves to the second button, and he swallows, the muscles of his throat moving in a complicated rearrangement before settling under his skin. On the third, he draws his bottom lip into his mouth just the slightest bit, and she has a mighty urge to run away. Her feelings are swelling in the most delectable, most unbearable way, but she makes herself conquer them, because she is a _Gryffindor, damnit!_and moves her trembling fingers to the fourth button.

When she reaches the last button his frock coat gapes open, and she pushes that off his shoulders too. She cannot bring herself to look into his eyes, so she watches his pulse beat in the hollow of his exposed throat. The white of his shirt is shocking; a dramatically stark antithesis to the image of the drawn, sour Potions Master.

"I did not come to you for absolution, Granger," he whispers. She doesn't know what he came to her for, but she knows that she wants to give it to him. She doesn't think she owes it to him, but he's spent his entire life asking permission.

"Will you touch me too?"

He stares at her with something like regret in his expression, and it doesn't make sense to her. She feels like he is mapping the contours of her face, and he looks so lost in the act that she says his name again. His mouth quirks a little bit at this. He traces her lower lip with his thumb.

"Like this?" he asks.

His thumb dips into the heat of her mouth briefly, before darting back out and continuing down the line of her jaw. She stares at him, his eyes half-lidded, and nods. His lets his roughened fingers trail down her throat, curving them across the curve of her shoulder, skimming across the top of her chest.

"Like this?"

His palm ghosts over the contour of her breast, and she tries not to arch into his touch. She should be scared now, confronted by her own inexperience in the face of his torturous calm, but she finds that she can't concentrate for long on any one thought.

"Yes, just... just like that." She holds her breath.

He presses harder, then, and steps forward with her until her back slams against the wall. He lifts the weight of her breast in his palm, squeezing it lightly, and she gasps at the sensation of it. His eyes flicker to hers at the sound, and he shoves her shirt up to her armpits and yanks the cup of her bra down. There is some inexpert fumbling until he finds her nipple and places his open mouth around it. The hard suction of his tongue against her areola pulls a fevered groan from her lips.

"You... you taste like..." She feels his deep voice vibrate against her skin. His hips move against hers.

Her hands find their way into his hair, and she tugs the strands against his scalp when he swipes the pad of his tongue against her other nipple. The sight of his dark head moving over her chest, and the little sucking, breathy sounds he is making against her skin make her so-so-so wet and needy in a way that will frighten her later.

He straightens and covers her with his chest, and she whimpers raggedly at the feel of cotton against her bare breasts. He buries his face in the curve of her neck, suckling and scraping and biting on the skin there, licking the knob of her collarbone, dragging his crooked teeth across the dip of her shoulder. She counts back the hours to her last shower, forcing herself to think past the murk in her brain. Then her head snaps up when he pulls her shirt up brutally, her bra with it, and the sound of the seams popping brings her back into herself a little bit.

She is naked-sheisnaked-naked-naked—

"Wait, I—_ah_!" she yelps as his lips close around her nipple again. "Nothing I haven't seen before," he mutters. But that was different—this is _different_, and her life isn't in danger and she winces as her breasts bounce unattractively with his movement—

"Can I touch you like this?" His fingers dip into the waistband of her jeans. She breathes out hard through her nose as little spots of black and grey and purple web around the edges of her vision, and she presses her thighs together.

"I—okay. Okay," she says, her tongue thick and unwieldy in her mouth.

Then he drops to his knees and pulls her trousers down.

"What are you... what are you..." she gasps, bordering on incoherence, her brain reduced to a bubbly froth and her heart trying to claw its way out of her chest cavity. She braces her hands on his shoulders because the sight of him like that on his knees, his eyes peeking up at her and his lips cocked in a strange little half-smile she's never seen before pushes the heat even higher until she thinks her head might explode and splatter all over the walls.

"Don't think, Granger. Don't think. Don't talk. Don't think." He pushes her knees aside so very easily, pressing her palms against her thighs so she can't move them. And she _lets_ him. She lets him, and his nostrils flare as she _lets_him.

She presses herself back into the wall, smacking her palm against her eyes, unable to take in the nearness of his face to her naked crotch. He is looking at her with _such_ concentration, like he wants to _take_something—_everything_—from her.

"I really don't think—"

"Shh," he whispers as he slides his finger _there_, and presses up, and swirls it around and around that spot that makes her hips buck against his hand. Something pops between her ears, and the sound trails off into a droning whine ringing in her head. Then suddenly his fingers are still, and his mouth is moving but she can't remember hearing anything—

"I said, does it feel good when I do this?" He swirls his finger around her clit again. She cries out, her voice catching on something in her chest. She realises that he is waiting for her to answer him.

"Yes—please—don't stop—"

Then he is standing again, his hand neatly tucked between her legs. His eyes scan her face, gauging her reactions. She feels a finger at her opening, and then he is fucking her with it, curving it forward and rubbing at her clit with his thumb. She doesn't make the conscious decision to bob up and down on his hand, but she finds herself doing it anyway. His lips chafe against the soft skin under her ear as he whispers, "Yessss... That's it. Fuck my hand, Granger."

He is breathing as heavy as she is now, thrusting rhythmically against her thigh. She lets her fingernails scratch down the back of his neck, cutting across the neat vertical trails of his sweat, and his hips suddenly snap forward. He bites her earlobe in retaliation and inserts a second finger in her, and she cries out at the pressure and the squelching sounds it makes against the slick wetness of her.

She is so close, _sososososo close_, and the friction of his fingers pumping in and out, in and out of her makes her smack her head against the wall.

"Please, please, please," she chants restlessly under her breath. She feels as if she is standing on tiptoe at the edge of the world, and she desperately wants to fling herself off of it.

"I'm going to make you come, Granger. I'm going to taste your cunt and I'm going to make. You. _Come_."

He bends on his knees once again and lifts one of her feet from the leg of her trousers and hooks it over his shoulder. She feels his hair slide along her inner thigh, then the tip of his nose prod her labia, and she should be embarrassed, but then his lips fasten around her clit and she forgets to care about anything anymore. A weak gargling sound comes out of her throat at the sight of his head moving between her legs, and when his eyes find hers, she finds herself unable to look away.

She is practically weeping now, and she is certain that she will either collapse or catch fire. She steeples her hands to enclose her nose and mouth, to stop herself from being so _loud_. He moves his hot mouth over her with a fierce possessiveness, delving and licking in utter abandon, his earlier hesitation nowhere to be found. She sobs out his name, thrusting her hips against his face and digging the heel of her foot into his back.

He takes his hand from her stomach and, without breaking eye contact, starts to rub himself through his trousers. His hips bounce against the motion of his fist.

"I...I..." she stutters, her mind a heated, quivering mess. She needs—_God_—she needs—

Then he somehow clamps his lips even more firmly against her clit, swiping at it broadly with the flat of his tongue, and _sucks_. He presses his fingers tight and hard and deep and pulsing into her, his knuckles shoved against her entrance.

She comes shrieking with the fingers of one hand pressed against her lips, and the other balled into a fist around his hair. She feels her spine go rigid, her insides coil into tight little points of tension, before releasing in a pulsating wave of something soaring and fragmented that _devours_ all that was left of rational thought. Her toes curl almost painfully, and the sheer _power_of the pleasure racking her bones frightens her, and she thinks she might black out or crumble into pieces all over him.

When she comes to, he is moaning softly against her neck as he fondles himself and thrusts against her. She sinks her teeth into the spot where his neck meets his shoulder, and then he goes completely still for three seconds before something soft and stifled and shuddering trips out from between his teeth and blows against her skin like water over stones.

* * *

"I have this dream." She is feeling unbelievably drowsy. And chatty.

He says nothing, turning his back to her to button his frock coat.

"It's strange. It doesn't really have anything to do with anything, but I keep having it."

"Stay awake, then."

She gives the back of his head a look. When she reckons that she has properly expressed her indignation, she continues to speak.

"I wake up and it's always freezing. At first it was in the snow, then it turned to dirt. I wake up somewhere really cold, and then the sun rises, and I can't feel my fingers. And you're..."

_You're in it,_she was going to say. She always woke up with an image of him watching her as her breath froze and the tips of her fingers and toes turned purple.

She watches the motions of his shoulders as he straightens his stiff collar.

"It's just a dream. I thought you weren't the sort to put stock in such rubbish," he sneers at her over his shoulder.

"I _know_it isn't real. It's just—"

"You can't control everything, Granger. Not even your own subconscious. One day you're going to choke on your pathological need for order."

"Not before _you_ keel over from all that spite in your system," she scoffs. The room is quite silent but for the sound of his fingers sliding over the fabric of his coat. She wonders if she should have left earlier, but it felt _cheap_, slinking out of her professor's lab like that. What is the protocol for this sort of thing, anyway? Perhaps she should have thanked him or something. Why the hell did she even tell him about that dream?

She scowls when she realises that her internal monologue only proves him right about her need for rules.

He turns to her then, his face blank.

"I suggest you return to your common room, Miss Granger. I would hate to take off points for being out past curfew."

_Merlin_, but he's quick to the draw. She thinks she's beginning to understand how it works, though. She reaches out to brush her fingers against his chest, keeping her eyes on his buttons.

"Okay," she says, nodding. "Okay."

* * *

Three weeks later Dumbledore will be dead, and Hermione will search the sky for something that resembles truth.

* * *

A/N:

*Taken directly from canon  
**'A Forsaken Garden,' by Algernon Charles Swinburne  
***Do I really have to say where this is from? Okay, okay. 'The Raven,' by Edgar Allan Poe.


	11. Eleven

It is her last night of patrol when she finds him convulsing in the Astronomy tower.

There is one moment where she watches him twitch helplessly with a fascinated sort of revulsion that she won't dare to examine later, and a wild, open space stretches out between her and him.

One moment where she thinks, what _the hell_ is he wearing? Because despite the balmy, late May afternoons, the few hours spanning the border between day and night are still as vicious as they were in the winter, and he is lying _there_, on the frigid floor, with the edge of what looks like a tatty old nightshirt riding up one bare thrashing white thigh.

The moon rises slowly from the mouth of resurrected night.

And the detached nullity is suddenly blasted away and leaves behind it the sickening feeling of a drop in her stomach and something that tastes like panic on her tongue.

Do something, she tells herself.

_Move. Move. Fucking move!_

And then she is moving. She gasps as her foot skids in something, and her throat heaves dry as she realises that her right shoe is now caked in partially coagulated vomit. She scrubs the sole of her shoe on the irregularities of the floor, trying to pry his sick off. Her other foot kicks against something hard. There is a sound of heavy glass skidding against stone. An half-empty bottle of something that smells alcoholic. It gluts itself all over the floor.

"Snape," she whispers urgently, hovering over him. She extends her palms outward, downward, as if to quell the spasms. His eyes roll back into his head.

"Shit! Shit. Shit. Okay. Okay."

Later it will occur to her that she should probably have run for help, to the Hospital Wing or to Dumbledore's office or something. She doesn't, though.

"Okay, I'm going to help you, but I need to—I need to—I'm just going to..."

She squats down and sits on his jerking, knobbly knees, trying not to hyperventilate. The sharp bones of his thighs cut into her bum and she feels his muscles strain under her weight. She doesn't know if this is the right thing to do in this sort of situation, but she cannot bear watching his limbs flopping around and making those slapping flesh sounds against the stone.

Up close, the nightshirt is more threadbare than she thought it was. Her eyes flit across the dark disks of his nipples, and, lower, the shadowed thatch between his legs. Her face burns.

"Li—L-Li-Lil—" he pushes out from his convulsing throat.

"What? Snape, what is it? Shit. I don't know how—_please_. Tell me what to do," she pleads, hysteria edging into her tone. She hates it and she thinks that it is good that he can't hear how stupid and useless she sounds right now, and then she hates herself for that thought too.

There is the sound of gnashing teeth, and, from further inside his mouth, gargling and snarling and choking. His unrestrained magic billows and sparks beneath her fingers. A spectral, sulfuric wind rises around them. She's heard of this happening, back in Headquarters when Lupin or Moody or some other senior member forgot that they were in the room. Something about prolonged exposure to the Cruciatus, and synapses over-firing, and muscle memory.

A froth of saliva and blood dribbles out of the corner of his mouth as his jaw locks and he flings his head backward, his throat arching, his skull bouncing off the stone floor. She can almost count the individual cords of muscle and sinew in his neck, and trace the complete path of his arteries bulging against his skin. The sounds clawing their way out of his throat change into something barbed and painful, like a savage beast with its leg caught in a trap.

She leans forward and tries to gather him in her arms, feeling his power boiling in the air around her and clacking into her pores where his skin touches hers. He smells strongly of mud and sweat, and the smell is cruel and insinuates itself into the niches of her mouth and in the crevices of her teeth, and she has the urge to spit it out.

"Ki—killed—h-h-her..."

"Shush, don't talk," she whispers into his ear in her bossiest tone, trapping his body between hers and the floor. She winds her palms down his upper arms until her fingers close about his elbows, and she struggles as she tries to hold them down. Her hold is slippery with sweat.

"K-k-kill—"

"Shut up, Snape, shut up, or you'll bite your bloody tongue off. I'm here. You're not making any sense. Shut up," she mutters over and over. She doesn't look at his face, because she is terrified that he will recognise her and hate her for seeing him like this.

She feels a wetness under her stomach, a hot wet seeping something, and oh God—_oh God_—she tries not to cringe as the bite of ammonia hits her nostrils.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she whispers, her vision blurring and her stomach sticky with his piss.

It feels like hours and hours and _days_, but the sun isn't up yet. The sky hasn't changed at all, and the moon is in the same exact spot.

His spasms slow gradually. The convulsions grow weaker until they seem like a faint echo of some vast, internal upheaval. His arm jumps periodically under her hold. Then he is still, and the sensation of an electric current thrumming through her veins ebbs and disappears. She remains on top of him, her head against his chest, her knuckles bloodless and straining against his arms. She tries not to dwell on the intimacy of their position, of how much she thought about lying exactly like this with her body spread out over his, and now that it's happening all she wants to do is run away and cry and vomit. There is a steady patter in her ear. She doesn't know if it is his heartbeat or hers.

His stomach caves under her weight as his lungs struggle to breathe something normal. She raises herself slowly, trying not to look at the spot on his nightshirt made transparent by the now cold dampness there.

"I'm sorry," he says quietly. His voice sounds hoarse and distant, like there is a bubble of phlegm in his throat.

"It's okay, it—" her voice catches unwilling on something big and shrivelled and expanding in the back of her mouth. "I-it's alright, Snape, I won't tell anyone."

"Your son has to die."

It takes her a few seconds of disjointed thought and clumsy connections before she understands what he said. "What?"

"I'm sorry. I promised you—" he looks away when his voice cracks.

"You're not making any sense, Snape. What are you talking about? What the hell are you talking abo—"

"All these years I protected him. For _nothing_," he spits.

"Is it Malfoy? Snape, is it Draco Malfoy? Why does Draco have to die?"

"What?" He looks at her now and it takes all she's got to look back. There is something sour in the air around his body, and in the way he is looking at her.

"_What_?'

"Who are you?" Her chest suddenly hurts like there is something clogging the valves of her heart.

"It-it's me. It's Hermione. Hermione Granger."

"Granger?"

"Yes. It's me. I found you," she says, scrabbling to her feet. The wet spot on her stomach absorbs all the cold in the night breeze that shifts her hair against her face. He looks up at her, a vaguely surprised tilt to his brow. Then he turns his head away, his mouth moving soundlessly over silent words. The moonlight casts long shadows over half of his face. It seems even more hollow and haggard and homely.

"You're nothing like her. You're plain. So pitifully plain. And such a fucking nag." She curls her fingers into her palms hard until she is sure her fingernails are broken. She fights the impulse to kick him in his side.

"Well. _Well_. You're reprehensible, and _drunk_, and you _pissed all over me_, you bloody—"

"Nothing like her," he repeats firmly, looking at her again, wrapping a hand about her ankle and letting it smooth up her calf. His hand stops at her knee, and she feels his long fingers flex and squeeze around it. There is something frightening in the way he is lovingly gazing at her leg, and in the way his touch wrought the ghost of mutual madness in her head. She jerks it out of his grip and steps backward. Out of his reach.

"You're not well, Snape. You need to get up. You'll freeze to death here."

"Nonsense, you silly girl," he mutters, tossing his head from side to side. A few strings of hair, damp with blood or sweat or the oils of his overproductive scalp, cling to his face. They cut clean lines across the bridge of his nose and the bow of his lips.

"Me mam bloody hated her. Said she was one of them... one of them..." He laughs something twisted and unpleasant. Then abruptly his face crumples into an expression of the most intense distaste.

"_Potter_," he sneers, spitting out the name like something foul.

Then he blinks, once, twice, like he just lost his train of thought. His face falls blank once again.

"Why do I hurt, Granger?" And in that one question she thinks she can find everything that was ever wrong with him and the world and _this_bloody situation. She clears her throat of the sudden tightness that forms there.

"You... you had a seizure. I think it might be Cruciatus. _Please_, Snape, let me help you up."

"Eileen would have liked you."

"Please, stop. Please, Snape. I need to get you out of here." She feels lost and achy and cold and his incoherent words sting like iodine in a deep cut. He is lying on the floor still, completely prone, his legs straight and his arms extended on either side of him. Later she will think that his pose was something symbolic. Poetic. But she will shake her head because poetry makes nothing happen.

"I should have fucked you when I had the chance," he says wryly, one corner of his mouth tilting up in an amused leer.

"Just... _Jesus_." She stomps her foot in frustration. "You've gone mad, haven't you? I can't..._Damnit_, I'm sorry, but I can't—you'll skin me if you find me here when you regain your senses and I have to—"

She pulls her wand to dry the spot on his nightshirt, and the puddle growing around his hips and filling the cracks on the floor, and to get rid of the smell. She shrugs out of her dressing gown and sucks in the air through her teeth as the cold hits her bare shoulders. She drapes the heavy cloth over him. She tucks the fabric under his bare feet. He stares at her intently all throughout her performance.

She runs away from him with something close to self-preservation, because he is _insane_, he's gone bloody fucking _nutters_, and why couldn't she _see_ it before? And she is terrified that he will drag her down with him, and even more terrified that her bleeding Gryffindor heart might let him.

* * *

The news that Professor Snape has come down with something contagious on their last class of the year was met with general applause from Hermione's classmates. Harry let out a magnificent yell of triumph. A few Gryffindors gave it a standing ovation. The Slytherins sneered and glared, but they knew what little power they had in a room full of Gryffindors without Snape to tilt the scales in their favor.

It only takes one raised eyebrow from Professor McGonagall to get the room to settle down, and everything goes smoothly.

* * *

She finds him at the dawn of the next morning in the Astronomy tower. She's spent the past two hours meandering about the corridors of the castle, hoping to run into him after coming up empty in his office and lab. She was about to give up looking for him. She didn't know what she was going to say anyway, and if he would even listen to her. Then she thought he might have gone back to the tower, like a criminal always returns to the place of the crime.

"You're smoking," she states by way of greeting.

He raises the cigarette to his lips with a jerky, ravenous movement, then pulls it away in agitated disgust. The line of his profile is barely visible against the slowly lightening sky. It is a tragic figure that he cuts against the mist of a summer's dawn, and she thinks that it is almost funny how fitting it is.

"Astute as always, Granger," he says quietly.

She props herself on the ground next to him, shifting to find a comfortable angle against the stone. He is standing and staring at something in the blue-greyness of the forest line, or at a smudge of dirt of his finger, but she thinks that he isn't really seeing anything.

"Are you going to make me stop?" he asks after the amplitude of the silence reaches confounding proportions.

"It's not your fault, you know," she blurts out. Festoons of ashes drip from his fingers. They float a weary path to the floor. Some of them go past the railing and fall to their deaths in the grounds below. Some of them cling to the drops of condensation on the rails.

"What the bloody hell are you on about?"

"I'm talking about Draco Malfoy. It's not your fault."

"Get out, Granger."

They are too close now to something better left unknown, and he is giving her the chance for a clean getaway. If she takes it, it would mean the end of it, and she would see him again at the Leaving Feast. Then she would go home. The next time he would meet her eyes would be in the Great Hall for her seventh year of school.

He turns from her, leaning his elbows against the rails. He might be blowing smoke rings, but she reasons that it is probably a trick of the light and mist, because Snape wouldn't be caught dead doing something as fanciful as that.

"Why do you have to be so nasty all the time?"

"I'm not _being_ nasty. I _am _nasty. There's a very distinct difference."

"I think you're one of those people who think that the best defense is a good offense, or something ridiculous like that, and you've been at it for so long that you're convinced you are the person you think you are."

"Why don't you go and bore some unsuspecting Hufflepuff with your psychoanalytical insights, Granger. I don't want it."

She notices a bruise on the high part of his cheekbone, the only part of his face she can see. There is a clot of purple in the center like a strawberry mark encircled by listless green, and, farther outward, a ring of fading ochre. It is the most colorful thing amidst the blues and greys of a Scottish dawn.

"His injury wasn't your fault."

"For once, I find myself in complete agreement with you. It wasn't _my_wand that sliced his fucking chest open."

"Yes, I know it was Harry, but—"

He whips around to face her, his hair snatched by the current of his movement. A spark from his cigarette falls unheeded into the folds of his robes.

"Don't you dare. Don't you _fucking_ dare justify Potter's actions, Granger! I don't care what it is you tell him to help him sleep at night, I don't give a bloody _shit_ what it is _you_ tell _yourself_ to convince yourself that your _friend _is anything more than an egocentric, pampered, malignant little blaggard, but I don't want to hear a fucking word!"

"I wasn't about to justify anything! I was just—_ugh_. You don't even remember, do you? You—it _isn't _your responsibility. You've already done so much... and you can't hold yourself responsible for whatever it is that Malfoy's getting into, and you can't hold yourself responsible for his mother's wishes."

He clenches his jaw and stares at her. "What are you talking about?" he asks dangerously.

"I... you don't know? The other night. You thought I was someone else, and you said that my son had to die, and that it's your fault. But it's not, Snape. You can't blame yourself."

He stares at her some more and shakes his head slowly. Stares again. Shakes his head.

"What makes you think it's Draco?"

"Well, because... because of the—" She cuts herself off abruptly, uncertain of how he will react if she tells him that they know about the Unbreakable Vow. He gives her a disgusted look and flings his cigarette off the tower. He watches it's progress down-down-down and she wonders how long it takes for something to fall from this height.

When he turns to look at her again, his face is impassive. The pinkening sky behind him casts a glow of borrowed health on his skin. She thinks that it is a little strange talking like this to him as the sun rises over the grounds, because whatever it is they've disinterred has no place in the daylight.

This time it is he who leaves. She hears his footsteps pounding down the staircase, then a door slamming shut somewhere below. She leans her elbows against the railing and swirls her finger on the cold metal bars, watching as the ashes from his cigarette melt into the dew drops of morning.

* * *

She is surprised to find him in the Great Hall at dinner that day, but then she remembers that he was never really the sort of person to hide.

* * *

She doesn't pretend to stumble upon him by chance when she finds him in the tower again, because this is the third time now, and he probably knows that she sought him out the first two times. She is starting to think that this place holds some sort of special meaning for him, but to ask him would be to sever whatever impulse it is that keeps him tolerant of her continued presence.

He starts talking. Not really _to_her, because he never looks at her once. He speaks with passive stoicism, pausing once in a while to take a drag from his cigarette. He talks about how he quit smoking a decade ago, and how he found a packet in his quarters last week and how he was unable and unwilling to resist. He says something dry and witty and disparaging about the state of his teeth. He talks about change and the illusion of choice, and of cowards, and of how no one really knows what war is like because the world has always been at war and everyone's got too used to it to still feel jilted by the inherent barbarism of human beings. At one point, he hooks his hair behind his ear in a gesture she's never seen before. He curses savagely when he realises that his cigarette is burned down to a centimeter beyond the hold of his fingertips. She listens to everything he says and doesn't speak. She doesn't nod either, because she is almost convinced that he isn't consciously aware of her presence, and her slightest movement would break the spell.

He turns to meet her eyes. When he speaks, his tone is reflective.

"What is it you think we are doing, Granger?"

It frightens her terribly, this question. There is a feeling of speeding toward the precipice with your foot poised _just_so on the brakes, but you aren't pressing down, because you want to see how far you can push it before you tilt off the edge and crash and burn. Just to see what it feels like.

"I don't know," she whispers, cracking her knuckles nervously.

"Disgusting habit, that," he sneers darkly at her. "You crack your knuckles and gnaw on your nails, and you wondered why Weasley chose that Brown trollop over you."

She grabs at his insult because it is the closest to normal he's been all night. She feels a familiar indignation at his low blow, and she raises her eyebrow.

"You have no room to talk about disgusting habits. Cigarettes are filthy and carcinogenic; you won't last a day after forty. Besides, there isn't any actual scientific evidence that there are adverse effects to cracking one's knuckles."

He narrows his eyes at her malignantly. "Do you always need evidence to believe in something?"

"Well, yes. Isn't that the rational thing to do?"

"I suppose," he says. He fumbles in his pockets for the packet anyway. He holds the fresh cigarette tight in the seam of his lips and it bobs up and down as he tries to get it to meet the lit tip of his wand. He takes an ostentatious suck from the fag, streams of foul smoke pouring from his nostrils.

They stay there for a while, just on the edge of awkwardness. Then he takes twenty points from Gryffindor and tells her to stop following him around and go to back to her common room.

* * *

He fucks her on his bed on a warm afternoon three days before the end of term. His pale skin is surprisingly unblemished as it captures the muted yellows and golds of a dying sun, and she traces her fingers along the old scars on his back. She runs her palms flat against the span of him, counting the knobs of his vertebrae, scratching her nails down the twin ridges of his shoulderblades, measuring the dips between his ribs. His muscles bunch and pull and tense something lovely under her hands.

She does not try to analyse how it is they ended up in this state. She didn't plan it, and she certainly didn't expect it. She had come to him in his office with a question burning under her tongue because she couldn't bear the thought of going an entire two months without knowing the answer.

"_Spit it out, Granger," _he'd snapped briskly at her.

Then she asked him about what happened that time in his lab, when he was still allowing her to help him, and he was summoned by Voldemort.

"Does the Dark Lord make us bugger each other, do you mean?" he said, his features blank.

Her cheeks burned something fierce and splotchy. But she didn't want him to think that she was just asking him because she couldn't control her curiosity, or just for kicks, or anything stupid and meaningless like that, so she refused to let her eyes trail off to find safety elsewhere.

"Yes, but that wasn't my real question."

"If you insist on wasting my time with your inane divagation, then I shall have to ask you to lea—"

"When we... when you and I—when we do... things. Does it feel the same way?"

"Either state your question clearly and coherently, or be _quiet_," he sneered, the consonants of the last word bursting like gunfire from between his teeth.

"Does-having-sex-with-me-feel-like-you're-being-compelled-to-do-something-against-your-will?" she spurted out in one big angry monotonous breath, her hands fluttering and panicky.

He went still and didn't answer. She fortified herself with a _huff_and started to say it again.

"I heard you the first time, Granger. Why—" he heaved an exhausted sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was the sigh of utter defeat. "Why are you asking me this?"

She swallowed, cursing herself. "Bec-because that's what it seems like, sometimes. Like you absolutely hate it. And... it doesn't... It would make me feel terrible if that were the case."

"Ah, yes. And Merlin forbid that Hermione Granger should _feel terrible_," he said mockingly. Then he gave her an appraising look, like a merchant examining his wares. He trailed his finger around his lips. "Tell me, have you ever tried methamphetamines?"

"_What?_" she said, affronted.

"_Of course not_," he said smoothly. Placatingly.

Then he gripped her by the wrist and tugged her through another door that revealed his quarters. She barely had the presence of mind to register what they looked like, or if they were warm or cold, or if he had a lot of books, or if he had any sort of stylistic preferences to the placement of his furniture. All she knew was that he was kissing her and clutching at her in his _sitting room_, and she was so _lost_ in the sensation of his hands fisted in her shirt and his tongue slanting against hers, and then they were in his _bedroom_.

He undressed himself with his back to her and something machine-like and truculent in his movements. He turned to her like he was daring her to find something funny about the whole thing, in the way he awkwardly shed his garments and in the self-conscious defiance in his stance. In the short scar on his collar bone. Hard and knotted and small. In the outline of spare, ropey muscle. In the bones of his pelvis stretching against his skin, and in the curves of his thighs. In the blackness of his pubic hair. In the jut of his cock. In the graceful architecture of his calves. And, when he stood on one foot pulling the leg of his trousers off the other, in the high arches of his feet.

On his face, the bruise she noticed the other day is just fading into mottled yellow.

He watched as she peeled off her clothes quickly, trying to angle herself so he wouldn't see her more unsightly parts stretched and folded from her movements. He continued to watch when she sat on his bed and hunched her shoulders slightly to conceal her breasts. He shoved a bottle of something in her hands, and she was too agitated to even think about what it was before she tilted it to her lips. He gave her a strange look.

His body is hard and hot on top of hers. It is a jarring contrast to the cold of his fingertips cradling her head as he supports himself on his elbows and feeds on her mouth. He is pressing down on her, his skin rubbing intimately against hers in all her unseen places. He is thin in a malnourished, overexerted kind of way. But wiry. And strong. For once she revels in the protective warmth of his weight, of being smaller, and softer, and for once she does not feel like it is a disadvantage.

She wonders if _this_ is what he meant when he asked her if she's tried methamphetamines. She is alert, and so very _awake_, a palpitating sensitivity approaching euphoria clouding her brain. She is aware of everything, of his fingers winding around her hair, the sharpness of his hip pressing into her thigh, and the hairs on his legs as they slide against hers. He shifts against her and his naked cock brushes against her naked cunt and her fingers tremble against his skin. There is wetness, and heat, and something unbearably effervescent, and she pulls back and presses her head down into the pillow.

He stares at her like he is waiting for something, but she does not know what.

She runs her palms up the cool skin of his back and brings them to the sides of his face. Her fingers skim across the sweat dotting his hairline, down his flushed cheeks, and across his thin, parted lips. His teeth close around her finger and he swirls his tongue around it and sucks. She blushes and gasps, because her finger must taste something like sweat, but he doesn't seem to mind.

He shifts again and she cries out as their heated flesh comes into contact and she is so anxious, because she wants... she wants...

"Are you..." he starts, his voice strangely labored. "Are you sufficiently..."

She must have made a face in confusion, and then mortification as she realises what it is he is asking. She cannot even begin to think of how she could possibly answer such a question when one of his hands moves downward and he lifts his hips to press his fingers _there_. Her lungs stutter as he slicks his fingers upwards and brings them up to the light to—good _Lord_—to _examine_them, like he would a vial of something she submitted for his consideration. He is holding his index and middle fingers rigid in some sort of two-finger salute.

And then... _Jesus_—she thinks she might ignite with shame when he turns them and the light catches on the clear, viscous moisture clinging to his skin, and it breaks apart in strings when he separates his fingers into a v.

He turns his head to her at the noise she makes, and he slowly-slowly-slowly brings his fingers to his mouth and buries them up to the second set of knuckles, and then slowly-slowly-slowly draws them out again. His eyes on hers the whole time. She forgets to be embarrassed, then, and she grips his shoulders and strains up to kiss him.

He pulls her to her tightly, his body coiling around hers with an exigency that she started feeling minutes and minutes ago and _ages_ago, and one of his hands reach down again.

Then she feels the head of his penis pressing against her, probing, sliding up and down, and when he thrusts forward it is quickly and decisively.

She screws her eyes shut and tilts her head backward again, breathing through her open mouth and clenching her toes. She knows there is some... movement involved, and she waits for it with her teeth clamped shut, but he seems to have turned to stone above her.

"Don't..." he whispers into her ear, his hand easing her bottom lip from between her teeth.

She opens her eyes to find him looking at her strangely, the same look he gave her when she drank the contraceptive. He is breathing hard but slowly, and she tries to match her breathing to his. She loosens her fingers from their grip on his shoulders where they have left little white imprints that flush to red when she lets go.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

Exhale.

And the dull pain between her legs starts to ease up and dissolve into something entirely different. She feels his pubic bone pressing into her at the spot where they joined, and a slight tinge of cresting panic at the strangeness of having someone else inside her body. She watches his mouth as it opens and closes on a soft gasp that feathers across her chin and neck. Then he rolls his hips, and her eyes snap back to his, her mouth sealing around a low moan.

He seems pleased with her reaction and starts to pull himself out of her. She is just getting accustomed to the slow drag of flesh on flesh when he sinks himself back into her with a snap of lean hips. He is watching her face intently for the slightest signs of pleasure or pain, his mouth pursed with concentration. She wants to look away, to jump out of her skin and hide because she doesn't think she will ever get used to him looking at her like this. He detects her nervousness with that inhuman perception, quirking his lips in annoyance. One of his hands comes up to cradle her jaw, his fingers digging into her cheeks, trapping her eyes in the line of his.

She is breathing faster now, and it is so, so, so unbelievably hot, and she is certain that she can hear the creaking of the castle's woodwork expanding against the masonry. He is moving with a deliberate slowness. Out of consideration for her, maybe. And she thinks she might go mad.

"Could you... could you maybe—"

"What would you like me to do?" he huffs out.

"Go... faster."

"I—"

She spreads her legs and brings her knees up so that her feet are anchored flat on the mattress. He sinks deeper into her and whatever he was going to say melts into a shuddering snarl. The sound of it tightens her nipples and shoots straight to her womb.

"_Fuck_, Granger. You feel..."

He hauls himself up to his knees, sitting on his heels. His hands are sweaty and tight around her waist. He does as she asked him and thrusts more forcefully, his eyes riveted to the place of penetration. She watches him watch himself fucking her. His hips pump faster, deeper, and he moves his hands to tweak her nipples, squeezing them roughly.

"_Oh_," she breathes. "I—this is... this feels..."

The sound of one particularly hard thrust echoes around the room, a bare carnal moist slap of flesh that causes a glow of embarrassment and arousal to spread across her chest. He leans forward again, looming over her, hooking an arm under her back and pulling her to him. His skin is no longer cool, but slick and flushed like hers, radiating heat like a furnace. He continues to rock into her, his eyes on the bounce of her breasts. Her fingers fly up to press against her lips when she starts to gasp and grunt in earnest. He bats her hand away from her face.

"Don't," he warns her again.

A drop of sweat trails its way down his forehead, down the dip of his eyelid, and clings to the soot of his lashes. His eyes are wide and dilated, and she wonders how she could have ever thought his name synonymous with mouldering ruin and tired, shuffling shadows, because there is no way now that he can hide the patter of his heartbeat, or the grind and spark of his _magic_in the scant humid space between their bodies.

He notices her looking at the place of their coupling and he plants his elbows onto the mattress, watching her face. She knows that she must look utterly lost and enraptured, because she _is_, and the sight of him pistoning into her, his cock slippery with—

"Ah!" She bucks her hips as his thumb circles her clitoris.

"You... you like that? I—ungh—_fuck_..." He sinks his teeth painfully, deliciously into her neck, the movement of his hips growing erratic.

He comes with a long, deep groan, going completely still above her for five seconds before he gasps out his breath into the space between her neck and her shoulder. He collapses on top of her, his breathing desperate and stuttered, and she feels his heart pounding against her breast. He raises himself up again and plunders her mouth with his tongue, flicking the wicked muscle over her teeth and the roof of her mouth, exploring her in the most voluptuous of ways.

She feels his cock slide out of her and she tries not to wince at the sudden stickiness between her legs, but then his hand curves down her chest, over her breast, and insinuates itself in her slit. She thrusts up into him as he fucks her with his hand, circling her entrance before plunging quickly and shallowly into her. He sits up and plucks at her clitoris with his other hand, watching her intently as she whimpers and clutches at the covers. And then—

"Wait, you—_God_—" she whines as he bends and drags the broad part of his tongue slowly up her cunt. And she fights the urge to scoot away, because she is sweaty and sticky with his seed dripping out of her, but he locks his fingers around her legs and over her hips, keeping her still.

She begs him, over and over and over to let her _go_, just _please let me... let me_—

His hands cup her bottom and tilt her and he fits the whole of his mouth over her—

She feels it like a blunt blow to the back of her neck and something primitive pummels her senses and breaks over her head. Her back arches, quite out of her control, and the muscles in her thighs and calves clench in the most aching, most unendurable of ways. He robs her of all she knows in that one moment, and the pleasure coursing through her veins is ineffable. Her brain drifts into a rising lull and the colors flash behind her eyes and she could be someone, or no one, and she could be nowhere at all, and she wouldn't care.

Her body folds back into itself as she collapses into the bed. Her consciousness returns to its proper place, and her brain makes that slow, halting journey from bliss back to something approaching reality. She feels like she should be twitching everywhere, but she isn't. Snape is sitting on his heels and watching her from the foot of the bed.

It is the most powerful thing she has _ever _felt, and the sensation of being swept away like she was is wonderful. Obliterating. Terrifying.

She groans internally at the knowledge that this is the most awkward part of encounters like this, and that she would have to get up soon. Already she is aching and sore, and the very thought of movement makes her want to turn over and let herself succumb to the pull of sleep. Leaving abruptly would perhaps be considered trashy by some, but staying _here_ with _him _is simply unthinkable.

She pushes herself up on her elbows, blushing when she collapses on the first try. His eyes remain on hers as she draws her knees together, trying not to think of how it might look or _smell _down there. She draws an arm over her chest and tries not to look too much like she is trying to hide herself.

Still he isn't talking, and she is a little frustrated because he obviously has more experience at this than she, and it is only right that he at least try to put her at ease. She winces at the sounds of the mattress creaking under her as she gets up, and at the stinging soreness jolting up her stomach. There is a sticky warmth dripping down the inside of one of her thighs. She keeps her eyes away from the dark spot she left behind her on his sheets, and she hopes it will dry before he notices it.

She snatches her clothes from the pile by his foot and turns around to quickly pull on her knickers. Behind her, she hears the bed creak and shift under his weight as he stands. She bunches the rest of her clothing like a shield in front of her chest, and looks back at him. He is bent at the waist, still naked, rifling through his clothing for something. His movements are brisk and jerky. Then he clicks his tongue with immense irritation and motions with his fingers. A packet of cigarettes wriggles its way out of the pocket of his trousers and soars toward his waiting hand. He straightens and looks at her, his eyebrows raised.

"Er... I... thank you," she stammers. She immediately regrets her words, because his mouth starts to crook upward. She shifts on her feet and crosses her legs.

"You are most welcome, Miss Granger," he says cautiously, his eyes crinkling a bit at the corners.

"Yeah... er... I should go," she bites out hastily, the tips of her ears burning.

"Come here." She almost looks behind her, to check if she really is the one he is talking to.

"What, now?"

He makes an aggrieved sound and scowls at her. She swallows and makes her way around the foot of his bed, almost tripping when her toe catches on one of his abandoned boots lying on its side on the floor. She snaps her head to look at him when she's caught her balance, daring him to laugh. He doesn't.

His kiss is soft and lingering and almost unfamiliar. She pulls away when he brushes his knuckles down the side of her hip.

"Lavatory's that door," he says, indicating with a dip of his head.

"Alright. Thanks," she breathes.

When she emerges from his facilities, dressed and somewhat calm, he is gone.

* * *

"Oh my God."

There should be a word for moments like this.

"Oh my God."

For that one second of suspended reality when everything looks like it is caught in the shimmer of a heat haze and your knees refuse to lock and your breath catches on a gasp and in that one second all is still but inside of you—_inside of you_—

"Oh my God."

There probably is.

A word, that is.

In one of those books she has.

In one of those many, many, many books she's committed to memory.

"Oh my God."

"Hermione."

"Ron, what are we going to—"

"Shut up, shut up," he mutters. He grabs her by the shoulders and squeezes and shakes. Up close, his freckles stick out yellowish against his sickly pallor. "We don't have time for you to panic. Remember what Harry said? We have to get the rest of the D.A."

"We can't! They'll only get—it's like the Department of Mysteries all over again... no, no, no, we'll get help from someone else—"

"Harry said—"

"I bloody well know what Harry said!" She hates how calm he looks, even with his face so pale, and are his hands trembling? But he looks calmer than she feels, and she hates it. "No—_don't interrupt_—we have to get word to the Order—"

"We don't have the fucking time for that, don't you see? Don't you fucking see? The _Death Eaters_are coming into the castle, and—"

"Okay!" She raises her arms and flings them outward to dislodge his hold on her. She thinks her heart should be pounding, but it isn't. "Okay. I'll go... I'll find my coin, okay? No—shut up! There is no way in hell that you've still got yours. I'll do it, I promise. But you have to go find Tonks, or Proudfoot, just... one of the Aurors at the entrances, alright?"

He is looking at her ever so strangely, and she knows then that she was wrong. Ron is anything but calm.

"Ron, promise me—_Ron!_—do it, okay?"

In the darkness the blue of his eyes is washed out and almost colorless.

"Right. Okay. I promise." He clenches his jaw and she thinks, he _just_turned seventeen, and he has no business going around with that grim resolve on his face. She stands there for five seconds before she realises that his warmth is gone, and that tap-tap-tapping sounds she hears are his footsteps walking away.

"Ron!"

He turns back a fraction of an inch. "We're wasting time, Hermione."

"Yes, I know. Just..."

Time. Time. Time. It's always running out, isn't it?

(_Running where?_, she wants to ask. _And from what?_)

Dragging them out the window. Cuffing them around the ears. Time knifing them in the gut. The seconds oozing out from between their fingers and it feels like a kick to the teeth. The contagion of ages hemmed in a heartbeat. Shiny steel boot caps.

She pulls the vial out of her pocket and waggles it at him. The liquid inside of it sloshes merrily against the sides of the glass. Ron's knee twitches as if he means to walk away without taking it, but she moves forward and grabs hold of his sleeve before he can.

"Be safe, Ron. Promise?"

His mouth opens and closes, and he probably meant to say _yeah_, or _sure_, but all that comes out is a wet clicking from the back of his throat. He takes the vial from her. When he returns it, she tries not to count how many centimeters of the potion are left.

He looks at her again, and then—

"You," he chokes out beseechingly, before turning on his heel and half-sprinting, half-walking away. She doesn't know what he means but she nods anyway, curling her fingers into the softness of her robes.

* * *

They take turns with the tiny bottle of Felix Felicis. It is almost like they are sharing swigs from the last bottle of butterbeer, one of those late-night sacraments of the Gryffindor common room. Luna passes the empty vial back to her and she stows it back in her pocket. For later, Hermione thinks, fingering it like a talisman.

Luna and Neville and Ginny.

You and what army?

Why, Dumbledore's Army, of course. Except it's been disbanded ages ago, and no one really thought they would be in enough danger to keep their coins in their pockets, or under their pillows, where Luna said she kept hers.

"Someone has to go warn McGonagall."

"I'll go," Ginny said. There is something comical in the contrast between the hard set of her jaw and her too-large sweater that hides most of her hands. Only the tips of her fingers are showing. She is curling and uncurling them, like she does before a Quidditch match she isn't absolutely sure that she will win.

"She might not believe you. I don't care what you do, just get any adult you can, alright? And take Neville with you," Hermione says, and she thinks, does this mean I'm in charge now?

"Okay."

"You need to be careful... we don't know exactly when they're coming, but Harry reckons it's from the Room of Requirement. Don't try to fight them." She looks the younger girl straight in the eyes when she says this, then to Neville. They both nod.

"Where are _you_going?" Neville asks her.

"I'm going to go check on... on Snape." She must have had a strange look on her face, because Ginny's eyebrows snap together and she opens her mouth to speak.

"No, I'm alright," Hermione cuts off Ginny's unspoken question. "Harry thinks Snape and Malfoy are up to something, so here's the Marauder's Map. Keep an eye on Malfoy. If you see Death Eater names pop up close to where you are, run away, get to the other side of the bloody castle, just keep out of sight, okay?"

"What about you?"

"I'll be fine," she breathes.

"I'll go with you, Hermione," Luna says simply. It is only the second time she has spoken anything tonight.

"Okay. Okay." She is stalling, she knows. It is so very quiet here, in this spare classroom, with the warmth of a lovely summer evening just on the other side of the walls. So very still.

Then she gets this horrid, horrid thought, and she wants to scream because it is not _her_. She thinks that she can just ward the door and stay here, in this quiet, still classroom, and the Death Eaters won't even think to come here, and she and her friends will be safe.

And this thought, more than anything, impels her to action.

"Let's go—no, wait!" Hermione walks over to where Ginny and Neville are standing and grasps their hands tightly in each of hers. Her sweaty palms slide over their cold ones. Or maybe it is the other way around. In any case, there were cold and sweaty hands squeezed around sweaty and cold ones. She ducks her head to hide the heat of her cheeks, because she knows the extravagance of this moment, and how her sentimentality could break it. She lets their hands go and looks neither of them in the eye.

"Be careful," Ginny whispers.

"I—we'll be fine," Hermione says firmly, saying a prayer in her head for luck.

* * *

There is a dripping sound coming from deeper in the dungeons. It makes the silence louder and stabbing, and it swells around them like a cancer. Hermione scuffs her toe against the floor for something to soothe her aching ears. She wishes something would happen already because the _not knowing_is killing her slowly.

She counts the seconds in the reassuring geometry of the shadows littering the floor.

And then something _does_happen, and she grips Luna's arm like she wants to take it from her.

"Severus! Severus! Death Eaters in the castle! Severus!" Flitwick comes barreling down the stairway, his spectacles dangling from one ear. It falls to the ground and he steps on it, but he doesn't seem to notice.

Then pounding on a door, and that door banging open. All the while, drip-drip-drip from somewhere further down the darkness. Then a harried yell, the prickle of magic, a thud.

Footsteps.

_Sshh, Luna._Fingers cutting off blood supply.

And then.

And then.

His eyes lock onto hers like the teeth of gears spinning inside a broken machine. That weird feeling again, like all possible outcomes on all scales have been set in place long, long ago, and the branching ink of consequence is unfurled indelibly into the language of the stars. It's so _weird_, like a song out of rhythm and verses out of rhyme, and her heartbeat syncopated to something dull and droning. Like trying to keep up with a conversation you can't follow, and you are just nodding along. Just dangling along.

There is no time to establish anything but the connection itself. He could have looked angry, or pinched, or sad, or worried, but she takes in nothing but his eyes _gnawing_into hers, and it is over.

"You two, get over here. Professor Flitwick has collapsed. Go and tend to him."

"_Quickly_!" he snaps when they take too long.

And he is gone.

They always said that fear feels sharp like the prick of a lancet, but it isn't. It is brusque, and oily, and rusted, and hollow.

* * *

There are a thousand and one separate and precise agitations battering her senses. A keen ragged gasping in her ears. A stitch burrowing viciously into her side. The sweat slicking her palm, the handle of her wand shiny with the stuff. A chemical burn wafting through the air; the scent of magic let loose, and of duels, and of fear.

Behind her there is the thud of Luna's footsteps. Steady and strong, and in her ears it is _one—two—gasp, one—two—gasp_. She tries to concentrate on the jolting beat of it, timing her breathing to it, because there are different sounds coming from ahead of them, and she cannot afford to let her imagination go to the ugly places.

Her foot catches on a crack in the stone and she inhales hard in surprise, but no air comes through because her throat is closing. She flings her arms out to catch on something in the darkness but there is nothing, and the whining in her head reaches an impossible, inhuman pitch. She locks her joints for balance and stiffens her muscles. And there is one second of gut-churning, sirens-blaring when she knows exactly what is going to happen, and exactly how painful it's going to be, but she can't do anything about it.

She topples forward and lands on her knees and elbows on the stone, before the momentum of her fall makes her elbows skid outward and her chin glances off the stone and the air is knocked out of her stomach. Her teeth clack together horrifically. There is a nasty cracking sound and pain like a flash of color behind her squeezed eyelids. She leaps to her feet, cradling her ribs and jumping around in place as if it will help.

Luna comes to a sudden stop next to her and bends over, panting, her hands braced on her knees.

"Are you alright?" she asks breathlessly.

Hermione gulps loudly in pain and annoyance, because now isn't the time to coddle herself, or to think about things like _elbows_ and _knees_.

"Yeah," she answers. "We have to go help them. Come on," she snaps, and she feels a little bad because it wasn't Luna that was holding them up, but she is terrified that if she waits a second longer, her legs wouldn't move forward at all.

The heat in her joints fades to a dull throbbing. She stretches her mouth over her teeth to relieve the tingling there. Ahead of them, below them, bouncing around against the high ceilings is the sound of battle, muffled and distant, like a voice trapped in a plastic cup. This frightens her, because the fighting is so _near_, finally, but still they are separated by layers and layers of stone and people are getting hurt and her friends are down there but here she is, running around, being of absolutely no use to anyone.

The hallway they are in is empty, but her bones are shaking with the pull of magic. Hermione skids to a halt when she reaches the tapestry.

"Wait, Hermione!" Luna calls out from somewhere behind her. "Does that go to the sixth floor?"

"What? No, this goes straight to the—"

"I think they're on the sixth floor."

"We don't have the time, Luna!" she almost yells, slicing the air with her hand to make her _see_, can't she bloody _see_?

Luna's face is as blithe as ever, but there is a hardness that wasn't there before.

"Fine," Luna says.

"Okay."

She pushes back the tapestry to reveal the staircase leading to the seventh floor, where the Room of Requirement is. She reaches behind her for Luna's arm and breaks into a loping run, knifing through the cold air pressing in from the close stone walls. She feels like she could run like this all night, despite the stitch, and gentle, almost soothing throb in her joints. She loses herself in the contraction of her muscles, in the push-pull-push-pull, and in the way that adrenaline and darkness seem to double the impression of speed.

_One—two—gasp._

_One—two—gasp._

They reach the end of the passage and open the door into emptiness.

And her heart sinks, it drops straight down into her gut, because Luna was right, _Luna was right_, and Hermione was too bloody arrogant to even think of the possibility that she could be wrong.

If she could pick one second, pinpoint the _exact_ moment that she knew and was absolutely sure that _this_ is war with one of those blaring _red_fucking pins that people stick onto maps, if she could sift through the thread of her memories to find when she learned that this complete dread and horror scraping against her ribcage is the feeling she's been waiting for since fifth year, that they are going too fast and there is no sign of slowing or stopping or saving themselves from annihilation, this would be it.

_This_moment, when the floor falls out from under her.

It happens like a dream, because no one ever thinks that the floor is going to give out, just like no one ever thought that Hogwarts could be breached. There is a sudden upward bluish gleam soaking out of hairline fissures in the stone, and though she is beginning to understand its meaning, it was impossible to begin to respond or move her limbs.

"They've blocked the stairs!" someone yells. She looks around wildly before realising that the voice is coming from her feet, seeping in from the cracks in the floor, from the _sixth_floor, like Luna said. The disappointment inside of her rings like a rebuke.

It lurches first. Then an enormous crack splits the air, and the floor starts crumbling into chunks of stone and wood and plaster and whatever it is that went into building the floors of Hogwarts.

Luna cries out behind her, and someone screams from below, and Hermione just keeps tugging and running, tugging and running, even as her foot caved in with the floor and there is nothing to push against. She leans all her weight forward, leaning all of her hope forward, trying to put everything it is she has into getting to that bit of stone that isn't shattering, and she knows that gravity will have its way like it always does, but maybe if she can just throw herself forward and get some leverage, because she's _so unbelievably close_, and maybe—


	12. Twelve

The pain is not confined to one place.

It rises in a turbulent, fetid shade of brown, a swelling of sticky fug behind her eyelids. She raises her hand to press it against the tenderness in her ribs, and it feels like it takes hours before her muscles respond with the appropriate movement. The pain is a separate entity, bleating for its own survival inside of her. It disappears from the coordinates of tangible space when she presses her palm against it.

There is a knife poised over her nerves and a disgusting gurgling that won't stop. There is exhaustion. And bone-deep calm. Quite suddenly, all she wants to do is sleep.

She wonders if this is a bad sign.

She shifts and moans, or tries to, pieces of brick and grit digging and sliding against her cheek. There is a pinkish glow heating her closed eyes, but when she opens them, everything is suffused in flat, muted shadow.

Some dim remembrance tries to break free of the placid warmth in her brain. It flits and throbs somewhere in the depths of her consciousness before it disappears.

There is the taste of ash, waxy and somewhat sweet in her mouth. Several illuminated points float in front of her eyes, like a string of broken Christmas lights. She remembers crawling into bed what seems like hours and hours ago, so why is it still so dark?

Dark.

The word is quaint. A pressing of tongue against teeth, a pushing of air to form that long, velvety 'ah' sound, a click in the back of the throat to clinch the word. So simple.

Dark-dark-dark.

And something tears through the sodden fabric holding her under.

Dark.

Dark Mark.

Astronomy tower.

Death Eaters in the Astronomy tower.

The pain, no longer a benign, exacting, all-consuming presence, is drilled into specific points of spatial cognizance.

There. A shard of something prying into her rib. There. A crawling unpleasantness in her neck. There. A yawning ache calcifying in her ankle. There. The disgusting gurgling is coming from her own mouth.

She is overcome by a sudden pressing need for oxygen, and she coughs on the grime that she sucks into her throat. It is quiet, and she squeezes her eyes shut against the eeriness of it. But the act of closing her eyes and wishing the silence away does not change anything.

She hoists her head up and winces as the inside of her cheek unglues from her molars. Her mouth is suddenly filled with the sticky tang of blood, and she spits a gob of it onto the floor. A string of spit stretches thinly before it breaks.

She pushes herself off her stomach, and her elbows buckle twice before she manages to make them do what she wants. Her muscles feel alien and unused, and it feels like they are jerking and spasming every which way, revolting against the authority of her brain.

She almost yells at the ripping sensation in the muscles flanking her spine when she lurches upright. The floor tilts and bucks beneath her, and the little pinpricks of illumination, those miniature Christmas lights wink and wave along with it. It is seventeen seconds before the world comes to a standstill.

The air feels too solid and cold in her lungs. She hears a metallic rattling from above and watches as a disembodied helmet from a dismantled suit of armor clatters from the torn edge of the upper floor. It bounces down the pile of rubble before hitting the ground, where it rolls outward in concentric circles. She watches its progress until the helmet finds some sort of equilibrious state and falls still. It's odd seeing both the sixth and seventh floors at once. It reminds her of a dollhouse her cousin Emma liked to show off whenever they visited. She'd never liked playing with the little dolls, never found enjoyment in positioning their wooden limbs and angling those little heads with the milky eyes in a simulation of domestic bliss. In any case, Emma was a horrid girl, and would only let Hermione _look_, but not _touch_.

The floor had stopped caving in about a meter from where she'd fallen. She wonders if she had tugged harder, or ran faster...

Perhaps if she had listened to Luna.

_Shit_.

Another urgent thought pushes past the indolence of a concussion.

Luna was _with_ her when she fell.

And now, she _isn't_.

Whereisshewhereisshewhereiss hewhe—

Hermione sees her shoulder first. It is oddly bulbous, jutting out obstreperously from Luna's torso. She is lying on her side a few meters to Hermione's left, her head turned the opposite way. Her heart feels like a giant, throbbing splinter in the hole that was made for it, because Luna isn't moving, and there is a reddish, slow-moving stain seeping gently through the dusty curls on the back of her head.

She moves toward her in a daze, every step drawing quickening heat from her ankle.

One—two—gasp.

She wobbles.

One—two—gasp.

She drops to her knees and makes to cast a diagnostic. Nothing fancy, just a basic first-year level spell. Alive or dead. That is all it tells you. She reaches in her pocket for her wand before she realises that she was holding it in her hand when she fell, and it is gone now. The irritable buzzing in her brain hikes up to another level. She squints in the dark, running her fingers through the rubble and ash on the floor around her. On some level she knows that there is no time for this. She makes herself think it.

No time. No time, Granger. No time.

She presses her fingers to Luna's neck. She doesn't know if it's the right spot, but she thinks there might be something there, palpitating weakly beneath the grimy, tepid skin. It is (maybe) enough. It has to be.

And if it isn't...

In action films they always have a bit where someone is knocked out cold by a neat blow to the back of the ear. But it doesn't work like that. Knocking someone out is a precise science. An in reality, anything that is strong enough to render you unconscious is likely to leave some lasting damage. And if it lasts for more than a few minutes...

She pushes the thought away because there is _no time_, and she can't let herself give in to the guilt now, because guilt makes people useless. Yes, that's it. She _isn't_ useless, not yet, and she can fix this. She bloody well has to.

She pushes herself to her feet, gritting her teeth at the white hot needles searing her back, and her neck, shooting up straight into the base of her brain. There will be time for pain later. Pain and guilt. But now, there is only room for logic. She lets her thoughts go down the familiar paths in her brain, gives herself into the soothing impartiality of rational inference.

She can't have been out too long, because the air is still snapping with the itchy residue of foul magic, and the castle still seems like it is in the grips of slumber. And surely, whatever the Death Eaters have planned, they will eventually be overrun by Order members and Aurors. They will have to retreat, but there are Apparition wards, and guards posted at the entrances. Which can only mean that they are headed back the way they came from (possibly).

In her head she calculates the quickest way to the Room of Requirement.

Passage to her right. Staircase around the corner. Door. Hang left. She can picture the bare expanse of wall in front of her, and hopes that the others have thought to go there too, and that they are okay.

She stumbles to the wall and clutches at it while walking. She blinks hard. Once. Twice. As if it will clear the dust hanging around in the air and filling her eye sockets to the brim. As if it will make the caved in ceiling patch itself up, and Luna dust herself off and start saying something about Grappling Whompers, and the pain frosting the edge of her consciousness go away. She hasn't got to full blown panic yet, but it is there, biting at her heels. She tries not to think about the fact that she has no wand (NO-WAND-NO-WAND-NO-WAND) and no real plan. All she knows is that there is no time. And that she has to fix this.

She grounds her teeth together and makes her legs move faster.

She reaches the passage to her right. Then the staircase. Then the door. God. Please. She is almost there.

The burning in her ankle makes her eyes water. She tries to throw up images of the most commonplace things to keep herself from flaking out. Raindrops clinging to a window. An incomplete tea ring stain in a book. The notches in her favorite desk in the library.

Hang left. Blank wall. Almost there.

Her mouth gapes open in a silent yelp as her foot skids in something slippery.

His face is a hash of crimson rawness. It looks like a diagram in an anatomy textbook, specifically angled for her edification. These are facial muscles, it seems to say. She is unable to look away, even as the bile churns in her belly. She sees through the missing chunk of his face to his upper and lower molars and, wedged between them, the hideous, glistening tongue. It is long and animal.

This is the eye socket, the labels in the textbook say. Here, beneath the flesh, is the intimacy of bone. So unseemly. Never meant to be seen in polite company.

She vomits until she can feel her eyes bulging. Her body heaves and racks itself in waves, and her hair swings forward precariously into the stream of sick. The snot is sticky in the space between her nose and mouth, and it is sucked back into her nasal cavity when she gasps for breath. The sogginess of it on the back of her tongue makes her gag again. A sour greenish fluid splashes across her feet and puddles in with the red congealment on the floor.

Red, she thinks. Where has she seen this redness before?

"God. Please. God," she whimpers pitifully. It is a Death Eater, she tells herself, looking away from his clothes and his shoes and anything that might identify him as someone she knows. It's okay, because it is a Death Eater.

"Hermione?"

She whirls around.

"Colin?"

Cognitive dissonance.

The confusion that results from being exposed to two conflicting perceptions. Namely, Colin Creevey standing in his pajamas, carrying a tray of what looks like various tarts and pies.

"What's going on?" Colin asks hesitantly, peering around the corner at her. "Is that... what is that?"

She starts to wonder if she's gone into shock, or if she really _did_ go to bed, and this is just some sickeningly realistic stress dream.

"Colin, what are you doing? You need to get back to Gryffindor tower. _Now_."

"I was just on my way back there from the kitchens," he says, offering up his arms to show her the tray of pastries he is carrying with a befuddled sluggishness to his movement. "Hermione, are you alright?" She wonders if he, too, thinks this is a dream, because there is no way that he cannot see the body and the blood at her feet.

"There are Death Eaters in the castle, Colin," she enunciates slowly, testing the words out for herself.

His grip on the tray loosens and it tips over in his hands, half of his midnight feast sliding to the floor. His face blanches.

"I don't understand. I was just in the kitchens, and I—are you going to take points?"

She wipes her hands on her jeans. "No—" run away, you stupid boy— "Prefects can't take House points."

"Oh," he breathes out.

What a very strange conversation.

In the back of her head, the mantra beats on.

No. Time. No. Wand. No. Plan. No. Time. No. Wand. No. Plan.

She smells him before she sees him. Buttery and piquant, like kerosene.

She gets this idea, this absolutely revolting idea, and some integral part of her balks at it. What will she do? She will lie down on the floor, next to this (dead?) body, and she will make Colin lie down with her, and they will roll around in his blood and her vomit and stay still. What's the plan? Play dead. The blood glints at her enticingly, and suddenly all she wants to do is put her face in it until she drowns.

She is almost sick again at the thought, because she is not that sort of filthy coward, and she _knows_ this, but the blood is shiny and attractive like the thin edge of a scythe.

The Death Eater saunters around the corner at the other end of the corridor. He is dirty and hairy and disgusting, and he stares at her in surprise out of eyes that are nothing more than gelatinous slits in a face unsettling like the inside of a mask. His eyes flick to the ravaged face on the floor, then they drag slowly up her body. His stare feels like ropes of slime sliding against her skin. She backs up until she is standing in front of Colin, kicking a danish out of the way. Colin grips her by the elbow and makes a sound between a sneeze and a whimper.

No. Time. No. Wand. No. Plan. No. Time. No. Wand. No. Plan.

The man smiles.

"Well," he says, like a villain in a film. Everything tonight seems like something from a film. The sharp gleam in the bloody puddle. The stench of vomit and body odor. The overwhelming _evil_ seeping from the Death Eater's easy gait and razor sharp grin. "Well, well," he says again. She thinks that this is where he is supposed to smack his lips and make a speech.

"Her... nee..." Colin whispers behind her.

"No," she whispers back, trying to cover his body with hers. She is lost. She clenches her teeth because _everything_ is painful, and because it feels like her mind has broken down on her.

No. Time. No. Wand. No. Plan. No. Time. No. Wand. No. Plan.

"What are you doing so late out of bed, love?" the Death Eater leers at her. "There are some very bad men roaming the castle, now, haven't you heard?"

"Stay away!" she shrieks, coasting now on nothing but the tread of adrenaline, pointing at him and sticking out her chin. _Jesus_, even she is starting to sound like a badly written character. No cliche left unturned. The Death Eater laughs and takes a step forward.

"I can make it nice for you, girl," he rasps. "I can make it lovely. And slow. And lingering."

It is a long shot, it is a pathetic shot, but it is all she has. She glances overtly at the bloody face and stares hard at the Death Eater. "I'll fuck you up. Stay away from us."

He laughs again, seeming genuinely chuffed.

"Did you think that was one of ours? No, no, dear. That there is all on me," he chortles, clasping his hands behind his back and bouncing once on the balls of his feet. The horror dribbles slowly down her spine, and it is a lie, because surely there are redheaded Death Eaters with fangs dangling from their ears. Surely, _surely_, this mucky mishmash of a face isn't Bill Weasley's.

"We are _on the run_, you blithering idiot," a familiar voice sneers. The sound of it is loud and clanging like cathedral bells dripping down the whorls of her brain.

"Aw, come on Snape. It'll take two minutes."

And just when she starts thinking that things couldn't get more _bizarre_, he billows around the corner. _Of course_ it is him, because of that inflamed awareness in her head. Her heart comes to a halt, a bloody_halt_, and she knows that she will remember this moment in fifty years. In a hundred years. The present moment crystallises into something jagged that rips through her skull.

"Snape?" she whispers. He doesn't look at her.

Draco Malfoy emerges behind him. Only sixteen, she thinks. It's strange, because Malfoy isn't some vague concept; she knows him in the flesh. And here he is now, surrounded by murderers. Harry was right.

No. Time. No. Wand. No. Plan. No. Time. No. Wand. No. Plan.

"One of yours, then, Snape?" the wolfish Death Eater says excitedly.

"You know very well that all students are required to take Potions, Greyback. Amycus and Bellatrix are clearing the way. Lupin has unblocked the staircase. Have at the girl for all I care. I am certain our Lord will find it in him to forgive you for your delay."

Greyback advances on Snape. "Who the fuck put you in charge, you greasy _lapdog_?"

"You are embarrassing yourself, _mutt_," Snape sneers coldly.

No. Time. No. Wand. No. Plan. No. Time. No. Wand. No. Plan.

"Severus?" she says. "What are you doing? This isn't, you can't... Where are the rest of the Order?" There is a desperation in her words, but, at its core, something empty and cold. Something ineffable that made her talk faster and lose her conviction.

It is an act, she tells herself. He is an excellent spy, and it is all an act.

He turns to her then and looks at her. Really _looks_ at her. His lips peel back from his teeth in a meager, menacing smile.

"I told you not to esteem yourself too highly, Miss Granger. You are unmemorable and unremarkable in every way."

She feels something like claustrophobia. A sensation of shrinking. A helpless confinement within a horrifying study in inevitability.

"No," she whispers. No no no no.

There is a trickle of blood at Snape's hairline, and it's strange, and funny, and so bloody strange, because it wasn't Judas that bled from the crown of thorns.

_Oh_, she thinks.

Of course.

Greyback looks at her in surprise, then looks at Snape.

"Oh, I see," he smirks. "I had no idea you liked them so young, Snape."

"I fucked her, if that is what you are alluding to. One is helpless in the face of her rather mawkish... _charms_." He looks her up and down with crisp precision, his upper lip curled in that way that is so familiar to her. In that way that she secretly liked. "Let's go, Draco."

"What about the Mudblood?" Malfoy says quietly, his eyes colorless and his insult lackluster.

"A Mudblood, is it? Well, _this_ is familiar, isn't it, Snape? I suppose you always _were_ hankering after _filth_—"

Greyback is suddenly pressed against the wall, spitting and sputtering, Snape's elbow jammed brutally into his throat. "Do not dare to speak of her, you fucking mongrel, or I shall see you strung up by your festering bollocks."

For a moment, Hermione thinks that Snape is enraged on her behalf, and she is, for a scant second, appeased. It's an act, after all. He is protecting her. But in the torpid swirl of her brain, she knows that this does not make sense. Nothing makes sense. _Her_ is someone else.

There are voices coming from somewhere down in the darkness. Familiar, friendly voices. But somehow the relief is slow to come.

Snape draws himself up, his face impassive once again.

She has never felt hate before. She thought she had, but this is different. It surprises her, because it feels a lot like love, but it is more crippling. And yet, dispassionate. It cracks something open, from her sternum to her pelvis. She feels it shaking and tearing and growing inside of her, a malign thickening of the blood and pain into something frighteningly unrecognizable. How could she be so _stupid_?

"You... you motherfucker! You fucking piece of shit motherfucker!" she screams, finding her feelings as she speaks them.

He gives her a sparing look. No regret. No explanation. Nothing.

_We are all bound, aren't we? We of the wicked calling._

"Kill her if you must, but do it _quickly_. I said move, Draco." They leave.

Webs of black net across her vision, and she feels like she is screaming, her voice digging into the rawness of her throat, but there is no sound coming out of her open mouth, and she realises that it is Colin that is making that horrid, horrid sound.

There is a sudden burst of activity at the end of the corridor, someone yelling, _you coward, you fucking coward!_ The electric scent of magic. Lights and spells and bangs. She feels light on her feet, and nothing but an agreeable sort of nullity in her chest.

_Of course, of course, of course_.

Greyback gives her one last longing look, licks his lips, and turns on his heel after Snape and Malfoy.

* * *

Albus Dumbledore is an empty office full of lemon drops and softly puffing knickknacks on a perfectly polished desk. He is the questions, but never the answers. He is doubt, and painful pretense, and grudging respect. He is the stiffness in McGonagall's spine. He is the trembling in Sprout's lip. He is a ridiculous, star-spangled hat. He is a pillar crippling in its power, toppled and defined by the hairline fissures on its surface. He is the last note in the phoenix's song. He is something crumbling in a white tomb. He is hope, fitted in a too-small box and sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

* * *

She walks across the lawn until she catches the taste of the lake carried across the sloping grass by a freshening breeze. The sky is a flat and unimpressive yellowish grey like dishwater, one lone cloud in a long smear across the expanse.

There is a line through this world.

She thinks she has most of it worked out.

There is a line dividing certain types of people. There are those who make decisions, and those who let the circumstances do it for them. There are those who run to the front lines screaming and flailing bloody murder, and those who cower in the space under the staircase, waiting for someone to draw them out and hold them while they weep. There are those who would die for an ideal, and those who would kill for a Knut.

It's an old concept.

There is strength and weakness, black and white, martyrs and curs, good and evil. It's always been there. A living entity breathing in the background, feeding on their choices.

Choices, choices, choices.

It all comes down to that.

It doesn't matter who you are, all that matters is what side of the line your shadow touches.

He joined them because he made a mistake, because he wanted power, because he is a human being. Perhaps he joined them for Narcissa Malfoy.

But more than that, he joined them because he is a liar, a bastard, a murderer, and everything else he claimed to be but she was too stupid to believe. She doesn't know if he actually believes that rot about bloodlines, but she doesn't care, because he joined them anyway. If he actually believed it, then maybe it says something about him. That he is the sort of man to cling to something, to stand behind something he believes in, twisted and deranged as it might be.

Evil is shattering your trust in the world. Evil is a desecration of the human. Evil is absolute. He is petty and bitter and hateful and unfair, and, yes. Evil, too.

Evil doesn't need a why, or a how.

No.

Perhaps 'evil' is too strong a word.

She grounds the heels of her hands into her eyes, trying to stifle the ache that blooms there.

She tries to picture to herself a cross-section of his brain, painted neatly in grey on a sheet of parchment stretched on a tabletop. The pulsing mass of grey matter divided into entrails, curling round one another in muscular precision. Maybe it will be possible, in the future, to point to a node here and say, this is where it started. To indicate another whorl and say, this is betrayal, and manipulation, and shameless deceit. This is the patina of affection. This is a quiet conversation on top of a tower. This is a joke shared in a private lab. This is the aching, ridiculously precious heat of a first kiss.

Human motivations can be vague and misty like the spiral nebulae on astronomical charts. People could know everything about the nebulae, but nothing about themselves.

Lot's wife was told not to look back at Sodom and Gomorrah as everything she knew and held dear burned in the wrath of God. But she did look back. She paused and faltered, her heart hammering away behind her eyeballs, and she just had to check, she just had to make sure that it really was happening. Do you blame her, then?

Yes, she thinks.

Because she should have known better. Because he told her, didn't he, that his mercy was mathematical and that his sacrifice was a statistic? Because the only man that ever really trusted him unequivocally is now dead.

He deserves to burn like Sodom, to crumple like Gomorrah. And she deserves to be shrivel and disintegrate like a pile of salt.

* * *

And isn't it funny, at the end of it all, that he turned out to be the Half-Blood Prince as well?

It is almost like that joke he made about being hatched in a cellar.

Eileen would have liked you, he said that night in the tower. His mother was as unattractive as he is.

_Ridiculous_, she thinks, giggling.

* * *

"I can't bear the idea that we might never come back," Hermione whispers. It is a beautiful day out. _Ridiculous_. "How can Hogwarts close?"

"Maybe it won't," Ron says, speaking gingerly around his swollen lip. "We're not in any more danger here than we are at home, are we? What d'you reckon, Harry?"

Harry is wearing a new set of dress robes for the funeral. The sleeves are just the right length for him. He clenches his jaw. "I'm not coming back even if it does reopen."

And she smiles a little, because this is how she always saw it happening. She just never thought it would get here so quickly. "I knew you were going to say that."

"We'll be there, Harry," Ron says. "At your aunt and uncle's house. And then we'll go with you wherever you're going."

"No—"

"You said to us once before," she cuts in, "that there was time to turn back if we wanted to. We've had time, haven't we?"

"We're with you whatever happens." Ron runs a hand through his hair; a relic of his days as Gryffindor's keeper. "But mate, you're going to have to come round my mum and dad's house before we do anything else, even Godric's Hollow."

"Why?"

"Bill and Fleur's wedding, remember?"*

She read somewhere that war is part of an inexorable cycle, a rising and receding that varies in players but always culminates in blood. She read that it doesn't ever end, not really.

But she is seventeen going on eighteen, and there is a solid knot of conviction somewhere between her lungs that they will be alright. That they are together, and they will be alright.

There should be more evidence of this monstrous upheaval, but there isn't. It's strange, standing here, so unbelievably strange to be anything at all. It feels to her like when you say a word over and over, and it begins to lose all meaning and feel awkward against your tongue.

* * *

The smoothing hand of time will fix this, she tells herself. Eventually, when she is old, she will think back to this moment and wonder, was it in 96? 97, or 98?

She wishes she could console herself with the fact that she was pressured into it. That he inveigled her and seduced her impressionable mind. She never was. She did it herself. She did all the cornering. She marched into the labyrinth of her own construction, and was too caught up, too keen to please. Can she blame the Gryffindor in her? Or is it some fatal flaw as much a part of her as the membrane lining her heart, or the pulsing in her gut, the salt of her angry tears?

She clings tightly to what she believes she knows. That he is a Death Eater. A murderer. A torturer. A traitor. And was it really surprising that he took what she so freely offered?

* * *

On the very, very last day of school, minutes before they have to leave for the carriages, Hermione goes to his office on a whim. She wondered, before, if she will ever reach a point where she can enter his office with confidence. She has reached that point.

She knows his passwords, and they haven't been changed yet. The fireplace is empty of the mad green light. The watery scent of stone is soothing to her.

Something on his desk catches her eye, and she walks toward it as if in a dream. She has the sudden urge to flee, like she did so many times before him. But she is too close to his desk now, and really, it is inevitable.

It is a small phial of gold. And, next to it, a pair of dragonhide gloves. Exactly her size.

She reaches her hand out to touch the gloves. Pulls it back. Reaches out again. She knows its texture well. It smells like him. Which is silly, she knows, because how can a scent stick in her memory so clearly, so stubbornly?

There is a scrap of parchment.

She stares at it, unwilling to read its contents, before she snatches it with trembling fingers.

In spiky, narrow handwriting, _Stay Awake_.

She doesn't know what to do but cry.

* * *

When does war begin?

Where is salvation?

What is redemption?

And how long until they can live with the answers to their questions?

Why?

_Why?_

Why-why-why-why-why-why-why-why—

* * *

No one cried for Judas. Judas went to a tree to hang himself, his thirty pieces of silver unworthy of the temple treasury.

The truth is just another thing to bend.

* * *

A/N: All the dialogue in this part is taken directly from canon.

Reviews would be great, thanks!


	13. Thirteen

"Look at me, Granger."

Her breath comes in short gasps. His face has a grey tinge to it, and he looks angrier than she has ever seen him. The buttons at his throat are undone and she can just make out the jut of his collarbone.

"Professor Snape needs to know the spell they used on you, love. Please look at him."

"I thought... _oh_..." Her voice catches as she sees her chest. There is no blood, no laceration. But her skin is a sickly cadaver yellow, her veins black, turgid, pulsating hypnotically. There is a large purple welt running diagonally across her torso, starting at her left shoulder, running across the nipple of her left breast, and ending at her right hip. And…

She bites back a scream. Her skin is moving and shifting. It is subtle, but she can _feel_ it. Like her organs are _churning _under her skin...

She heaves herself over the side of her bed and vomits. Madam Pomfrey's small, slightly damp hands pull her hair back. "Oh dear, oh dear," she says, over and over like a litany.

She drops back onto her pillow.

_I'm going to die._

I'm going to die.

I'm going to die.

"Perhaps someday, but not tonight. I won't let you die tonight."

Things flash before her eyes, things she regrets. It turns out Harry _did _have a saving-people thing. But it isn't his fault. Antonin Dolohov's febrile glare and damning smile are before her again, the flash of purple, the pain. Then, he is gone from her head. Somehow she feels colder.

She sees him doing something with his wand pointed at her chest, sees him chanting low and melodious through the tears in her eyes. The heavy warmth of his hand on her chest is still there, and it is an anchor, a lifeline. She is watching them from somewhere else, watching herself seize on the bed, watching as the welt becomes a deep red, approaches a gut-clenching black, watching as her skin churns and finally as it splits, blood-splatter like in the films.

Somewhere, someone is whispering, "You won't, you won't, not tonight!"

She watches as he doesn't flinch, her blood dripping from his face, the tip of his nose, his lip. Blood in a little pool in the hollow above his collarbone.

But it isn't her blood at all.

How can you recognize blood?

She doesn't know, but the blood isn't hers. It is his.

His eyes bore into hers. He looks frightened, and this frightens _her_. Then he starts staggering backwards, his left arm flailing comically, his right hand clutching at his throat. That long, white, muscled throat of his.

His back hits the wall with the sickeningly heavy thump of dead flesh. He slides downward. Blood smeared angry and accusing all over white stone behind him. He moans something awful, his voice tearing its way through the spaces between his teeth.

He is holding his hands to his neck, as if trying to keep his soul from rising up and spilling forth from his bowels.

"Look…at…me…Granger…"

She tries to move her legs and get up from the bed, but there is a heavy weight holding her down. An invisible hand pressing into her ribcage.

"Wait," she rasps out. "Snape—just wait for—"

But Harry is already there, kneeling in Snape's blood and holding his hand. How did Harry get here? She wrestles with the inertia dumbing her limbs.

"Look…at…me…" Snape whispers again. Harry moves in front of him, bringing his face closer so that her view is completely obscured. But she has to see. It was _her_ Snape was talking to, not _Harry_. How did Harry even get here? She _has _to see—

And then Harry changes. It is still Harry. It looks like him. Same eyes and everything. But his hair grows longer, sheets of russet streaming past his shoulders.

_Stay awake_.

She opens her eyes to the yellow-tinged darkness of her room and the smell of sleeping bodies.

The yellow is coming from the window, where a roiling fog rubs its muzzle against the pane, licking its tongue into the dark corners.1

She'd fallen asleep on top of the covers, still in her jeans and shoes. She shoves her hands into her back pocket, twisting her fingers until they catch on the scrap of parchment that she always keeps there, always keeps in her back pocket no matter which pair of trousers she is wearing. The parchment bears the scars of many nights of creasing and clinging and clutching. Folding and refolding. Crumpling and tossing, then snatching again, and smoothing carefully, reading carefully. Lingering, slipping, curling, and finally, falling asleep.

* * *

In the beginning was the darkness, and the darkness was with them, and the darkness was them. There was confusion too. They all had different ideas about how to fight a war, and they argued until they forgot what they were saying in the first place. It was difficult to remember that they all belonged on the same side.

Though belonging means so little these days. You can belong anywhere, or nowhere at all. It certainly isn't a good enough reason to go to war.

But Hermione wasn't the person who believed in a world that cannot find equilibrium. She was the opposite of that. She was the girl who fought with her heart in her mouth, who saw that daylight was just on the other side and tried to convince everyone that the night will end. So she stood where she belonged; with her friends.

* * *

They were supposed to win the Battle of Hogwarts, and they did. And the war was supposed to end then, but it didn't. No one was surprised.

Weeks before the battle, when it was just the three of them running around the forest, they shared this knowledge between them. An inflamed awareness of an approaching conclusion. The painful realization of events coming to an endpoint.

It did not come to an endpoint, because in the real world things don't come to a neat clean-cut close just like that. It _felt_like it did, for a good while, when the smoke finally disappeared and the wreckage was cleaned up. For a few golden weeks when things were almost normal, and she and Ron spent that wonderful month at Shell Cottage.

But soon afterward it became clear that there is no such thing as a 'Final Battle,' and that things like hate? Resentment? Prejudice? They had a tendency to cling on for years. Generations. Centuries of bloodshed rising and receding. And killing their leader did not kill the hostilities.

They have the backing of the Ministry now, though. Things are finally starting to feel like the kind of warfare you read about in history books. Dirty and unpredictable, but they try to prepare themselves for it all the same.

There is training, strategy, research. There is proper allocation of resources, communication lines, safe houses. There are emergency Portkeys and potions, and little golden phoenix pins to identify your teammates. Healer squads. Raids. Maps tacked to walls. Protocol. No more hiding in the woods with the wild wind biting at their heels. No more scrounging for mushrooms in the darkness, praying that they weren't poisonous.

Maybe the universe is trying to get back at them because Harry had too much just handed to him. Harry wouldn't speak to her for a month if he knew that she'd thought that. But it's true, despite the great tragedy of his life.

He took up the mantle of 'Chosen One' unwillingly at first. Awkwardly. The sleeves of his destiny three inches too long and dangling past his fingertips. But then he grew into it like they all knew he would, even though he hated the title. Maybe the fates looked at them and decided to mix things up a bit, because they had it too easy.

All three Deathly Hallows in the possession of one person? Really? All Horcruxes destroyed just in the bloody nick of time?

They were lucky. And now they are starting to know what war really is.

She used to think that war is a tumor, growing uncontrollably and taking over, corroding away from the inside out, starting at your softest tissues. Gluttonous and disgusting.

No.

War is more like a splinter than anything. It insinuates itself in your vulnerable parts, finds its way to your soft underbelly. At first you are numbed by the shock of it, and you aren't even aware of the pain. You walk around, going through the motions, trying to convince yourself that the next battle is going to be the last one. Then after days… weeks… _years_, your flesh grows over and around it until it is a part of you, and removing it would be infinitely more ruinous than learning to live with it.

This isn't dueling pistols at dawn. You never want to fight fair; you want to sneak up behind your enemy and club him over the head, because war can't be won with just banners and brave people with big hearts.

* * *

Everyone just assumed that she would do best in combat, so they assigned her there with Harry and Ron. Everyone she knew vouched for her, and her reputation preceded her. There wasn't a single hitch. They went through Auror training in condensed form, and she was scared the whole time, though everyone told her to stop being so modest. She worked through the smaller missions first, with teams of just two or three. Then they put her in the more dangerous ones, and she found herself completely out of her element. It was too cold, too dark for her to be able to tell where to aim. Parkinson was killed, and she quit the combat division.

She keeps her phoenix pin polished to a manic gleam even though she opted out (begged out) of fighting months ago. She feels the weight of it on her sleeve like lead coating her bones.

* * *

"Cheer up, love. One day at a time," Moody told her just days before he died.

His words didn't mean anything to her at the time, but it's different now, with her face cold and her heart colder.

She finds herself with nothing to do, her continuity fading away. The lack of familiarity is itself becoming familiar, like she is abandoned to a waking dream in which there are thoughts, but no sense of what they are; no expectations, no idea of what she is about, no memory of the hours before, or where she is going, or what the plan is; no curiosity about any of it. Her friends, the few times that they do see each other, are all very careful around her after she dropped out of combat.

It frightens and annoys her, because she is not a person to let herself be sucked in by self-pity. So she teaches herself to keep track of the date at all times, to remind herself that time is linear, and that the day that came before won't ever happen again, and it is just one day closer to the end of war. One day at a time.

* * *

The walls are the kind of white that blinds, and there are five chairs positioned around the fireplace, and those are white too.

We each of us carry in our heads a picture of what we think we look like. Or should look like. It's weird, because for Hermione this picture is of her standing alone in a completely white room. She hasn't the faintest idea why, because usually people would idealize their facial features, or the way they stand, or the clothes they are wearing. But for her the picture in her head is of herself, looking like she always does in the mirror, with her scraggly hair and her skinny ankles, just standing alone in a room with white walls and a white floor and a white sky peeking in through the windows.

Hermione lugs her trunk in through the doorway of the first empty room she finds and sets it down on the floor. She straightens and breathes in air that smells faintly like fresh paint and looks at what is to be her room for the next two days. Or two weeks. There is a buzzing in her ears that is only there when she remains motionless, so she moves to the bed, sinking her bum into it and bouncing a few times experimentally, like she is on vacation in a fancy hotel somewhere.

It's all wrong, though. The safe house is exactly the right kind of white and empty, but she knows that the girl standing in the white room in her head and the girl standing in the white room in a Ministry-owned safe house in the middle of nowhere are no longer the same person.

This realisation is neither tragic, nor romantic. It's just one of those things you come across one day for no reason, and you know that it is the unequivocal truth.

* * *

The constant and pervasive anxiety they all share as trainees is something Hermione is very familiar with. It is strange, at first, because she's got so used to Harry and Ron asking her all the questions when they were hunting Horcruxes, and then whenever they were put in a team together for a mission. She finds herself easily irritated whenever she is told that she is wrong.

But then she finds comfort in the punctiliousness of it all, in the rules and carefully defined lines of action that cumulatively give such satisfaction, and the sleepless nights invigorate her in a way that she thought she had forgotten.

Cho catches her eye behind the Head Nurse's back. Suddenly, Cho makes this _stupid_face, tucking her chin into her neck until her jaw disappears and stretching her mouth in a grotesque parody of the Head Nurse's rather rubbery lips. Hermione thinks that she is successful in stifling her snort, but the Head Nurse whips around and fixes her with a look of vindicated disapproval, like she was just waiting for her to make a mistake.

"Miss… Green, I believe?" The Head Nurse smiles sickly sweet. Hermione is reminded of Umbridge.

"Granger, ma'am."

"Yes, of course, I apologize. Miss Hermione Granger. Harry Potter's girlfriend, aren't you?"

It was impossible to remain unknown after the Battle of Hogwarts, and this is the Head Nurse's way of flinging it in her face. The fact that Hermione is famous, and that her fame cannot possibly work in her favor. The other trainees shift on their feet. Someone snorts.

"His _friend_, ma'am."

"And do you think that this grants you special privileges, being a _friend_to Harry Potter?"

Hermione purses her lips. "Not at all, ma'am."

"Why did you join the healer response team, Miss Granger? I would have thought that someone of your… standing would be on the front lines. With Harry Potter."

She clenches her jaw and begins the count from ten to one in her head.

"I asked you a question. Why are you here?"

"I joined because I wanted to help."

"Perhaps I should have made my question clearer. Why are you not out there with the combat teams, of which, I believe, you were a prominent member not many months ago?"

She is starting to regret signing up for the program, but she shifts her weight onto one foot and reminds herself that she doesn't have the luxury to be choosy in war. "They told me to take a break. So I left."

"_Why_, Miss Granger?"

"Because I was a liability," she whispers.

The Head Nurse's face changes then, her smile becoming genuinely kind.

"There, now. Fighting isn't for everyone. You may have been a liability there, but you will make yourself quite useful here."

Hermione doesn't know how to answer. The Head Nurse recommences her lecture, and Cho gives her an apologetic look. Hermione looks down.

Training for nursing duties is vastly different from Auror training. It's more boring, for one. She'd come into the program expecting to be thrown into it, like they were thrown into the war. She thought there would be slipping in puddles of blood, and shit-stained sheets, and amputations.

It's just a lot of rules, really. She doesn't know where these rules come from, because they aren't healers, really. The real healers are all at the Ministry or Headquarters, and the rest are in the healer response teams that waited on the sidelines until someone in the combat division called for help. The trainees are mostly younger than Hermione, and, like her, don't really know where they belong. The Head Nurse tells them they all belong here; stowing away cleaning supplies, folding the blankets, lining up the cots.

* * *

Harry's hair, messy as it is, has a softness to it that she was always secretly jealous of. It's one of the few things Harry doesn't know about her, and she doesn't plan on telling him soon. She lifts a piece of it, too long and clinging to the back of his neck. She picks up the scissors and holds the blade up to the hair she's pinched between her fingers, trying to figure out the best angle to cut it.

"Are you secretly jealous of my hair?"

Her eyes fly to meet his in the mirror. "What?" she blurts out.

"Just cut it already. I thought you said you've done this before."

She huffs out a laugh, feeling very happy all of a sudden. It is the happiest she's felt in _weeks_. Seven years, and still Harry manages to surprise her with that uncanny perception of his. She is secretly jealous of that, too.

The kitchen they are sitting in is hideous. Not even a charming kind of ugly, or a nostalgic ugly, or ironic ugly. Just plain, sad, linoleum-and-formica-and-peach-tile ugly. There is a dampness to the whole house that clings to your clothes, and the lamp hanging from the ceiling sways to the movements of the enthusiastic couple upstairs.

"God, they've been at it for _hours_. How the hell is that even physically possible?" Harry twists his mouth in disgust and wonderment.

"Yeah, I don't really want to know," she says, because she doesn't. The idea of two people having sex just a few feet above her head makes her feel icky.

"Seriously, though. It's that Jones bloke, isn't it? The Auror who just came in yesterday?"

"I guess...?" Putting a face to the squeaking noises makes it even worse.

"You know what's weird? I didn't see him bring anyone in his room. Maybe he's alone in there. But he's been at it for _hours_. Can you even imagine how _sore_his—"

"Okay, Harry? You know how I said that I've done this before?" she cuts in, partly to change the subject, and partly to cover up the fact that she has just nicked off around an inch more of hair than she intended to.

"Yeah?" he says cautiously.

"Er… I might have lied, a little bit."

It is his turn to gape. He makes to get up from the chair. She places her hands on his shoulders to halt his movement.

"No—sit down, Harry!"

"But you said—"

"What I mean is, I _have_done this before. To my cousin, Emma. She was being a twat, and something just snapped."

"Something just snapped…" he repeats slowly.

"It was one of my first displays of wandless magic. One minute she had pretty blonde curls, and the next—"

She is just in time to lean back to prevent Harry's head from clipping her chin when he stands up abruptly. He turns to her, wide-eyed, looking quite wild with his hair reaching his shoulders.

"Come off it, Harry. It's not like you ever cared about your hair."

"I do now! I'm the Chosen One. I can't go around looking like a homeless bum anym—"

"Oh, you can't be serious."

Harry continues to stare suspiciously at her.

"Come _on_, you plonker. Just let me do it!" she says, resisting the urge to stomp her foot. "See, I'm going to use _scissors_, not magic, I promise."

She knows she has him when his top lip twitches.

"Ugh. You are such a whiner," he mutters darkly, plopping himself back into the chair with utter resignation in the slump to his shoulders.

She crows with triumph and gets to work. Pieces of his hair fall in a pile to the floor. For a while, the only sound is the breathy snip of the scissors. Harry has his eyes screwed shut.

"Your hair is very black," she says absentmindedly.

"Yeah. Like my dad's," he replies after a while.

She hasn't felt it in a long time, that feeling of hurtling too fast toward something unknown, of careening wildly and pulling each other over the lip of an infinite drop. She hasn't felt it because she knows that_now_, at this moment, it is too late to feel it, and that they are _in_the unknown, they are in it, they are with it, they are straining under the burden of it. But she gets an echo of that feeling again, and suddenly her throat feels like it is trying to swallow a golf ball.

"Harry, do you ever think about… do you ever just want to… to leave, sometimes?"

She hates herself for saying it, because out of all of them, she is sure that it is Harry who feels it the strongest. Even if he doesn't know it. He _must_be feeling it, because if it is just her, she doesn't think she can live with herself.

Slits of glittering green crack open to meet hers in the mirror. He doesn't speak.

"No one knows you're here, Harry. We can leave tonight. We'll find Ron, and we can take Ginny with us. We can go to—to Nepal, or to Indonesia. Somewhere hot and humid. Somewhere with mountains." Somewhere with mountains that ache to meet the day, somewhere ridiculously romantic where they can get lost in the improbability of it all. The image in her head is vulgar like an oath in graffiti on cracked siding, and wonderful like the scent of grass.

It's such a stupid, impulsive plan that it reminds her of Hogwarts, when the most danger they faced was Mrs. Norris and Filch. It's so absolutely _stupid_that she almost runs back upstairs to her room to begin packing her things.

"Hermione…" he sighs finally, looking at her like he has seen the worst of the world, like he knows the sorrowful secret of the universe, and he doesn't want to tell her because she's too young. She wonders when he suddenly grew up, and when _she_, logical, practical Hermione Granger, became the girl who is too scared to be told the truth.

"Would you hate me if I left, Harry?"

The moment is dangerous and it feels something like vertigo, and she feels her body tilt forward in anticipation.

What is vertigo anyway?

The fear of falling?

She thinks it is something bigger. Falling is only frightening after the first second, after all. Beyond that it is blissful unknowing, and the cleansing pull of gravity, unbridled. She thinks that vertigo is the desire to fall, against which we must defend ourselves.

Harry smiles at her in that young/old way of his and she knows that he will say that he will never hate her, just like he will say that he has never thought about leaving the war. She twists her fingers in his shirt and smiles back. The danger of the moment is past, and they are just two friends sitting in an ugly, tiled kitchen.

"So... I guess Jones is done for the night. Wanked his todger right off, I'd wager. See—did you hear that thump? That was his dick falling to the floor."

"Ew, Harry!"

_Stay awake_.

She opens her eyes to the yellow-tinged darkness of her room and the smell of sleeping bodies. There isn't a bed creaking away above her head. There are no clumps of hair lying on the floor. There isn't a pair of scissors in her hand. There isn't an ugly kitchen. She hasn't seen Harry since Christmas of last year.

She shoves her hand in her back pocket and takes out the old battered note, brings it to her face and breathes in. If she tries hard enough, she can almost imagine his scent. She remembers his inkbottle, shuddering on his table as he kissed her.

What was that line from the most famous Shakespeare monologue?

To be or not to be, blah blah blah. In the dream of death what sleep may come.2

That doesn't sound right to her, but she doesn't know enough Shakespeare to pinpoint what she got wrong.

* * *

There is a sudden influx of the injured and dying, and she would have been daunted if she didn't keep reminding herself of who she is, and what she thinks she stands for. She tells herself that this is the sort of thing that she is good at, that she can _handle_, because the part of her that always wants to take control of the situation and make things right has always been bigger than the part of her that is always afraid. The ward looks like something massive and indomitable ripped through it, exactly how she thought it would be at first.

It's a big jump from emptying bedpans and fluffing pillows to actually _healing_people. Every secret of the body is spilled out in front of the unsuspecting trainees; bone risen through flesh, sacrilegious glimpses of gut and spleen. Some people just stand there, like someone's lost children.

"Oh my God," says a man levitated in by one of the healers. The anguish in his voice rolls and rings through her, and she thinks she might be sick. He is naked. They lay him face down on a cot. On his back is the biggest wound she has ever seen. Here and there one edge of ruptured skin rises over the other, revealing the fatty layers beneath it. She doesn't know how he is still conscious.

The healers are quick and efficient with him. Tied around his arm is a label from the casualty receiving station. He is treated with compassion.

A funny word, that.

'Com' is the Latin root for with. 'Passio' for suffering. People use the word all the time to mean some deeply human connection. But here, compassion means something completely different. It connotes a certain condescension toward the sufferer; it is the demeaning of oneself to feel someone else's pain. An inferior, second-rate sentiment that has little to do with human emotion.

The closest word to it is pity.

The other trainees look around as if in shock. Then the training kicks in, and they cycle through the procedures, taking in and healing the injured with all the alacrity of an assembly line.

* * *

She remembers a time when magic was a world wrapped in gold and silver like a present underneath the Christmas tree.

Will they survive themselves?

* * *

Hermione learns more in her next five months than she ever did at Hogwarts, despite her distaste for the emotionlessness of it all.

She learns how to pull out shrapnel, and how to wash her hands until they are dry and cracking and scrubbed red and raw. She learns how to read the shorthand scribbled on the labels wrapped around the patients' arms. The labels are from the emergency healer squads, who Portkey those they are unable to heal to the safe houses. She learns how to deal with severe burns. She learns to accustom herself to the smell of dirty bandages and gangrene. She learns how to peel off the sodden, congealed lengths of ribbon gauze without breaking the new scabs underneath. She learns how to do all this without the aid of healing potions and balms, because sometimes they have to save their supplies for the more serious cases.

She learns how they bring bits of the battle with them. Blood. Oil. Sand. Mud. Shrapnel. Failed Portkeys. Bits of rancid food in their pockets.

One time, she is transferred to Headquarters when they have a shortage in staff. When she returns to the safe house, her patient is gone and there is another trainee changing the sheets and charming the mattress clean. She asks the trainee where the girl is. The girl is dead, the trainee tells her. The cot is needed by someone else.

She learns not to ask too many questions

She learns how to console those who scream too much. A stern glare. And then she tells them, there is always someone worse off. You could be dead.

She learns that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended.3

She learns how not to draw attention to the fact that she is Hermione Granger, Harry Potter's best friend. She takes on the pallor of the other trainee nurses; she takes on the color of the walls and the immaculate sheets. It's not very difficult.

She learns, above all, how to follow protocol.

By the time they are promoted past their trainee status, Hermione is almost glad to have so little time to think of anything else but her duties.

* * *

"Make a wish!" Cho squeals happily.

_Twenty years_, she thinks. She remembers when she thought about growing old like it was something to look forward to. Back when she turned ten, then thirteen, then fifteen. She is twenty now, and the number feels like a needle through the walls of her heart.

"Thanks, Cho," she smiles warmly. It is always nice to have someone make a fuss on your birthday.

Cho is her friend by default. They aren't always stationed together, but they see each other the most often. On the first night of training, they huddled together under the blankets and talked about the D.A. They had little free time to find out if they actually liked each other as people, but they are linked together by their past, even if it seems so far away now.

Cho baked her a cake. It is ugly and brown, looking more like a melting pile of cow dung than anything.

Without thinking, Hermione digs her palm into it and hefts a frosted chunk into her palm. She weighs it, marches up to Cho, who is smiling at her in confusion, and smears it all over her pretty face.

Cho gapes at her disbelievingly for all of ten seconds, her cheeks slowly turning pink beneath the brown.

"What the fuck are you fucking _doing_?" Cho growls, globs of cake clinging to her hair.

"I don't—I don't _know_—" Hermione wheezes. She laughs until she can swear that she tore her stomach lining and tears are streaming down her face, and then she is choking on chocolate cake as Cho shoves it down her open mouth. It is delicious.

It is almost as if all that dogma about the importance of hygiene drilled into them during training is completely undone. The cake never stood a chance. Neither did the kitchen.

And Hermione forgets, for the moment, that Harry and Ron are hundreds of kilometers away.

* * *

"Fuck protocol!"

The Head Nurse isn't at this particular safe house, the one surrounded by hills. Her supervisor is someone Hermione has never met before, and so she doesn't yet associate her face with any kind of authority. The supervisor is a mass of bulges; a bulge at her waistline, a bulge at her escaping buttocks, bulges for arms, a bulge where her head tries to burrow into her torso.

"Excuse me?" the supervisor exclaims on a rising note. "Five days' suspension, Granger!"

"_What_? You _can't _do that now! Do you know how much you need me—"

"We can manage quite well without your expertise," the supervisor says coldly, her bulge-y chin quivering. Hermione scowls, because she didn't mean it like _that_, like she was indispensable. She meant that there was a shortage of people and supplies and fucking _willpower _everywhere, and every suspension means that there will be even less.

"Jonathan _died_ because you lot thought it was more important to _document _him before actually healing hi—"

"Jonathan died because he was killed by a Death Eater!" The supervisor pushes her chair back and slams her hands on her desk. Her mouth works for a few seconds before she speaks, and when she does, her voice is dripping with indignation. "The rules—the _protocol_—are there for a reason, _Miss_Granger. We cannot afford to dally about as we please when lives are at stake. You—you can't... You are too youn—"

"Don't you _dare_ say I'm too young," Hermione says quietly. "Don't you dare even _think _it."

Hermione has seen death before, on the battlefield. The supervisor has most likely never been in battle. For her, the fear of death is nothing more than a vain and comic denial of the inevitable. She has never slept in a tent with a chain wrapped heavy around her neck, laughing quietly (insanely) to herself, dredging up the darkest things inside of her against her will, thinking that her deathbed will be a squalid tent on the hard forest ground and that the worms will finish her eyeballs before the others can find her. She has never cowered in a corner, hating herself for her cowardice, praying to a God she doesn't believe in for death, the greatest of equalizers, so that no one will ever find out how afraid she really was.

For her, death is just another mattress to clean. Sheets to replace.

They look at each other stiffly and Hermione knows, rationally, that the supervisor isn't out to get her, that she has better things to do than to hold personal grudges against the barely trained nurse with the big hair and the authority problem. This isn't one of those situations where she has to prove herself to anyone, but it's difficult sometimes to remember that they are all on the same side.

"Just... leave. Please," the supervisor says, something tired in the way she looks to the side and furrows her brow.

Hermione remembers something that Lupin told her, long, long ago. That the Killing Curse is deceptively simple, because it is just a flash of green and in two seconds a person is dead. But war spreads far beyond that flash of green and those two seconds, and everything it touches is forced to its knees.

She is still angry though. She draws her spine straight and is seized by an impulse to do something appropriately dramatic, to say something scathing that would cover up the fact that she knows she is the one who has to back down. She opens her mouth, closes. Clenches her fists, releases.

All she can manage is a scoff before she stomps out of the room and kicks the door shut behind her.

The ward is half-empty, unrecognizable from the mess it was just two hours earlier. Jonathan's bed is the second one from the end of the row. She remembers how, looking at his pulsing insides as he begged them for something to kill the pain, it felt so much like blasphemy.

Jonathan's body is gone and now the _real_Jonathan, the one that was more than blood and foam, is gone too. Body and soul, that laughable conceit, might as well be one and the same. They aren't so irreconcilable, like everyone says they are.

There are indentations on the sheets where Jonathan's body thrashed and thrashes no longer.

She is disgusted with everything. With herself.

The window looks out on a slope overgrown with the crooked bodies of barren trees. The woods cut off the view above, and a line of mismatched hills stretches into the distance. She stares outside for one second.

Three.

Five.

She yanks off her gloves and runs downstairs, yanks the door open, and walks outside. _Fuck_ protocol. She walks past the broken path and the damp earth, past the slope and the crooked trees until she is at the edge of the woods. She wants to walk until she reaches the hills. She wants to walk until the oxygen bleeds out of her lungs, and she doesn't have to remind herself to _breathe in, breathe out, breathe, Hermione._

She walks until she doesn't know where she is, and she cannot walk any further. A stitch digs viciously into her side. She bends over and arches her neck. The sky stretching above her is a benign grey and white.

What remains of Jonathan?

A silhouette on a cot. Tell my mum I'm alright, he said when he was too far gone to save and his tongue was loosened by all the potions they crammed into his body.

What remains of Fred Weasley?

His reflection in the mirror, brought to life. A trick wand lying around somewhere. Punchlines that will never be laughed at.

What remains of Tonks?

Another motherless child. An old photo with a wild-looking girl grinning cheesily into the camera, her hair electric blue and her nose pierced.

What remains of Lupin?

A battered suitcase with his name on it. A distraught boy who has lost his parents, his godfather, and now the man that was his last link to them.

What remains of Snape?

A pair of gloves. A grubby note. A war.

History will rehabilitate you, she thinks. She _hopes_, because she has always been that person who believes too hard. But what does history know of trick wands, or nose piercings, or suitcases?

Life is the greatest truth she knows, but war makes it seem like nothing more than the most frivolous of jokes.

* * *

The drip, drip, drip into the cracked veneer of the sink marks the passing of the seconds and reminds her that time goes on. There is an Auror seated at the table. He is burly and middle-aged, curled into himself with his head lying on his forearm, breathing deeply to the time of the leaky faucet.

Hermione stirs the oatmeal in her mug and puts her face above the steam to warm it. The Auror is the first person she has seen for days, but she is hesitant to talk to him. She does not know if he is asleep or merely passing the time with his eyes closed.

There are things that stay with us relentless and unmerciful, and there are things that walk away like the summer's heat from an open window on a passing afternoon. In fifteen years she will remember the drip, drip, drip into the cracked veneer, and the smell of sweat and cold night air from the Auror's robes. In twenty years she will remember the name Jonathan, and the shape his body etched into the sheets beneath him, but she will forget what he looked like, or why he died.

Tell my mum I'm alright, Jonathan said.

His words, so poignant at the moment of his passing, seem so trite to her now in the cold light of day, as she leans her hip against the counter and stirs her oatmeal.

* * *

On the rainy days when her sense of time dissolves and drains away, she sits at her desk to write letters. She sticks to the easy things.

Dear Harry, how are you? I miss you. Cho Chang baked me a chocolate cake on my birthday. I think you would have liked it. Don't do anything stupid. I am attaching a passage from A History of Goblin Guerrilla Warfare. Don't laugh; it might come in useful. Be safe.

Dear Ron, please try to write legibly. I can hardly read half of your letters. And make them longer, too. I'm not allowed to wear any jewelry on my hands, but I keep the ring on a chain around my neck. Please visit. Be safe.

Dear Ginny, where are you? I haven't heard from you in months. I'm friends with Cho Chang now. She is nicer than we thought she was. I love you. Be safe.

Dear Neville, did you hear the one about the chicken, the horse, and the goat? It's funny, I promise. I won't tell you until I see you, because I don't want to ruin the punchline. Keep your chin up. Be safe.

She is surprised that her handwriting is still as neat as it was in school. She has so little time to write these days.

Owls aren't allowed anymore, not unless it is an emergency. Keeping the safe houses unplottable is a top priority. She folds her letters up and tucks them neatly into the bottom of her trunk, where they won't be creased or bent out of shape. The courier can come anytime between two hours from now and two months from now. At night she leaves the door of her room open, so she will hear if anyone's arrived with deliveries.

* * *

"Get the hell away from me!" Daphne Greengrass is blonde and beautiful, even with the ropey scar running across her lips.

Hermione is confused. "Greengrass..." she begins in that stern, no-nonsense nurse's tone that has taken her weeks to perfect.

"Don't _touch _me, you—you—"

Hermione braces herself for the word she knows so well. Greengrass was a Slytherin, after all, and even if she is on the side of the Order, it doesn't mean that she is above such prejudice.

It is another 'm' word that leaves her mouth, though.

"You _murderer_!" she snarls.

And suddenly it is clear to Hermione. She tries to remember if Daphne and Parkinson were friends back in school. The other nurses look at her, waiting for her to defend herself, but the muscles of her jaw are aching and frozen.

"You killed Pansy, you fucking _bitch_! I'll kill you! I'll _kill _you!" she screams, her pretty, disfigured mouth stretched tight over her teeth. She strains against the hold of two nurses and a healer, and finally succumbs to a Full Body Bind. The blood doesn't leave her face, and it is caught in a red and violent contortion.

Hermione mutters something to herself, shaking her head when someone asks her if she is alright. I'm okay, I'm okay, she says. I just have to...

She leaves the ward and locks herself in her room for two days.

* * *

His teeth are yellow from two decades of nicotine, and they are uneven from bad luck in the genetic lottery.

His tongue is ridged and slippery, his lips pliant, and most people do not think that there could be anything sensual about this man, but they are wrong.

He isn't moving. She pushes her fingers past yellowed teeth and ridged tongue deep into the muscles of his throat, the muscles that make his voice so smooth and lovely.

"Severus?" she whispers timidly. She is choking him.

"Severus, please," she implores. She is killing him.

_Stay awake_.

She opens her eyes to the yellow-tinged darkness of her room and the smell of sleeping bodies.

The note is still in her back pocket. She squints to count the letters on it. Nine letters, three syllables. It is all that is left.

* * *

A bottle of basil pesto. A grotty tomato. A pack of processed cheese squares, hard as concrete. A gigantic tub of lumpy yoghurt.

The pantry offers no better options. A tin of Italian-seasoned breadcrumbs. A small plastic bottle of soy sauce.

She closes the pantry door with enough force to rattle the entire row of cabinets.

What a _crap _house.

Crap day.

Crap week.

Crap year.

* * *

This month's courier is a large-eyed girl who looks about sixteen or seventeen, just a child with a legal age, and Hermione wonders if she has ever been that _young_. The girl is insolent and dumps a plastic bag of canned food on the kitchen floor like she is too good to be carrying plastic bags of canned food. Hermione is annoyed by this. She would have remembered how she was exactly the same way not too long ago, thinking that she was _entitled _to a more important role in the war, if she wasn't too busy being annoyed and wondering where the Ministry gets Muggle rubbish bags.

"D'you have anything to send?" the girl asks sullenly. Hermione looks at her just long enough for the girl to feel uncomfortable and start scuffing the toe of her boot against the floorboards.

So _young_.

"Yeah, hang on. They're in my trunk upstairs."

Hermione runs to her room and kicks her trunk open and scrounges around for her letters, and as she hands them to the girl, she gets one envelope back. It is thin and light, but she holds it to her chest and says thank you like she means it.

She spends the rest of the day in her room reading it.

Hey, it starts. Harry's handwriting has only got worse with the passing years, and she smiles at his messy g's and clumsy a's.

I'm okay. I can't tell you much, but my team hasn't had any casualties for a good three months. Things are going well.

This tidbit of information is already more than she has clearance to know. He goes on about other things, like how he needs new boots, and how one of the safe houses he's been to, the one with the begonia wallpaper trim, has a garden out back that she might like, and what was that spell you used to keep my glasses clear in the rain again, Hermione?

I have to ask you something.

There is a blot at the end of this sentence, like he stayed his quill too long on one spot, trying to decide if he should continue with this letter or start over.

Anything, she thinks.

So you know how I've been trying to get approval for Snape's funeral? I got it. I didn't want to bank on my name too much, but I said something to the effect of, I am Harry Potter, you stupid fuckers. Okay, no. I didn't say that. I definitely implied it, though. The team lead said that anyone who had any questions should just raise their hand. I didn't raise my hand. I kind of just yelled it out. So yeah, I think they got the message.

Snape's funeral.

She skims over those two words quickly, pretending that she doesn't know what they mean, tracing her fingers absentmindedly around the lines of her lips in an adopted gesture whose origin she has long forgotten.

Anyway, I think I should say something at the funeral, but I don't know what.

Funerals are a luxury in war. It probably will be more like two people standing over a mound of earth than a proper funeral. She holds the letter half as tight as her eyes closed.

_Breathe in, breathe out, breathe, Hermione._

Will you come?

She reads it four times before she moves to her bed. She falls asleep with the letter on her chest and her face tucked into the crook of her arm. When she wakes up six hours later, she reads it twice more.

Outside, winter is fast approaching in deep purple and squalid grey, and the long night stretches its blind fingers across the sky.

* * *

A/N:

Hey guess what, guys! We're all caught up! This chapter marks the end of the stuff I took down. I'm just waiting to get caught up on Ashwinder before I post the new ones here :)

You know what would make me really-and I mean _really_-happy? You guessed it! A review! Go on, write some stuff in the little box. The little box beckons.


	14. Fourteen

"It was the most disgusting thing," Dean says, his head cocked sideways in confusion. He scratches at the space between his nose and mouth.

"What, like gory and bloody disgusting?" Cho asks.

Cho doesn't let on much, but she has a very obvious, wondrous sort of fascination with injuries obtained in battle. Hermione saw Cho staring at the wounds of some of their patients in a way that could be potentially construed as rude and prying. It would have been cute, the way Cho gets all curious like a baby animal, if the source of it weren't so morbid. The supervisor already had 'a word' with Cho about this. She even said it that way, the supervisor. Chang, a word. The supervisor, Mrs Dorris, is a nice enough lady. The kind of nice that goes to church every Sunday and thinks that suicide is a sin. Mrs Dorris is a Muggleborn; witches and wizards who grew up in the magical world think of religion as nothing more than a harmless amusement. Anyway, Cho had to have a word with the supervisor because of her habit of staring at injuries like she wanted very badly to be told exactly how they came about, which the patients weren't too keen on doing most of the time.

Hermione thinks it is because Cho has never been part of the devil-may-care Gryffindor set, and Cho knew from the outset that she would be joining the healers. Hermione can see how there is a gritty glamour in the idea of joining the combat squads.

"No, not gory. There was hardly any blood. It was, you know, _strange_-disgusting. I almost kicked it away when it fell. It was just lying there, like I dropped it or something. Like maybe I dropped a sock, or a—I dunno—a toothbrush." Dean makes a face. "Some other bloke did. Kicked it away, I mean. And now it's lost forever."

There is a moment of silence as Dean, Cho, and Hermione stare at the gap on Dean's hand where his middle finger should be. The man lying on the cot next to Dean emits a fevered groan.

"I still think it's weird. I mean, how do you lose _only _a finger? Whoever cast that curse must have been really specific about it," Hermione says slowly.

"Yeah," Cho says, grinning widely. "He woke up that morning thinking: today's a good day to slice of some poor bugger's finger. He _wanted _that finger, Dean."

"I _told_ you, I _sneezed_. I was hiding behind a bloody tree and I just got this mad urge to _sneeze_. The other guy heard me, I reckon, and just started flinging Slicing Hexes in my general direction. And now my life will never be the same. It's the little things that get you, I always say," he states gravely, nodding. Dean always liked to quote himself.

"Who gives a shit?" mutters the man lying on the cot to Dean's left, before rolling over to his side to go to sleep. Cho giggles.

"Will you still be able to draw?" Hermione asks cautiously. As soon as the question leaves her mouth, she realises that it wasn't the most tactful of things to ask a fingerless man.

"I dunno. I bloody well _hope _so. But it's not like I've had much time for it lately. I don't think I've seen a pencil in the past fourteen months." Dean says this like it couldn't matter less to him, but Hermione grew up with the boy. They weren't best friends or anything, but they shared a home for the better part of six years. That type of prolonged contact does things to people, even if they started out hating each other.

"You can always grow it back, can't you? I've no idea why they didn't give you any Skele-Gro or something. Two hours, and you'll have your finger back." Cho says, wrinkling her brow.

"I… Well. I sort of asked them not to give me any."

"What? Why? Is it because you don't think it'll work? If it was a Slicing Hex, which is easily recognisable, then that isn't a Dark curse at all. Skele-Gro will work just fine." Cho's face is incredulous, with a slightly condescending tilt to the lip that she has inherited from the Healers.

"I just didn't want any, okay?" Dean pouts mulishly. Mulish pouting is practically a Gryffindor trademark.

"Why, though? I don't understand why you'd—_what_? Speak up, Dean." Cho insists.

"I said it's _silly_. I don't want to tell you."

"You don't have to," Hermione pipes up quickly, feeling a bit guilty for bringing it up in the first place.

"Of course he _has _to, we're in charge here, aren't we? Come on now, tell us or we'll leave you here all alone with that charming man over there."

Cho tilts her chin toward the muttering man on the cot next to Dean's. The man came in two days ago, and he'd been muttering about 'lovely soft bits' and 'Engorging Hexes' ever since.

"Okay, okay, you don't have to be so pushy. Why the hell are you here anyway? I was having a perfectly civil conversation with Hermione before you came along," Dean says darkly.

"Fine. You want me to leave? I'll leave. I had to go stock up the pantry anyway. I guess I'll see you in two months or someth—"

"No!" Dean says with some alarm. Hermione tries to hide a smile. Dean's been carrying a torch for Cho ever since third year. Oh, it sputtered a little bit when he dated Ginny, but it's still there. "I mean… Sorry. No, don't go. I'll tell you. Are you ready? Sit _down_, Chang, I said I'll tell you."

Cho settles herself primly back into her seat, a small, smug smile gracing her lips. Hermione suspects that Cho has long been aware of Dean's little crush, and is using it to her advantage.

"You know how…" Dean trails off, flexing his toes beneath his blankets. He takes a deep breath and speaks again. "You know how in the Muggle world we don't have an easy fix for everything? Right, Hermione?"

Hermione nods uncertainly. "Yeah, I guess."

"Well, my mum's dad—I've never met him, but my mum told me about him—he was deployed to France during World War II. My mum said she didn't really think he got into any of the real action, any of the fighting bit. He was an engineer, right, so he was stuck doing science-y stuff, I guess."

Dean nods slowly, as if trying to reassure himself that he got the words right.

"And?" Cho prompts him.

"And he came back. He was fine, completely fine, no big, dramatic scars, no nothing. Nothing at all wrong with him. Physically, I suppose, because my mum said he took to staring at the walls after that. Not _all _the time, mind. Just… Just sometimes, maybe once a month. He'd just make some excuse and go to his room and stare at the walls for two or three hours. And then after that, everything would be back to normal."

"How sad," Hermione says.

"Yeah," Dean agrees.

"It's… That's terrible, Dean, I'm very sorry. But, er, what does that have to do with not wanting Skele-Gro?" Cho frowns.

"I suppose it's because I feel like nothing at all is wrong with me. I mean, we're in a fucking _war_, right? Shouldn't we have gone insane by now? But we haven't. Look at us," Dean scoffs, looking both girls in the eye. "_Look _at us, we're sitting here like we're still at Hogwarts or something. That day I got my finger chopped off, I thought I was going to die. I was hiding behind a tree like a fucking wanker and I thought I was going to die and I thought… I just found myself thinking: I wish every day felt like this."

"They need us to _not _be crazy, Dean. They need us to do our job, that's why we're sitting here," Hermione says, twisting her fingers into the edge of Dean's blanket that is hanging over her lap. "Isn't it a good thing that we're still somewhat whole?"

She looks at Cho for support, but Cho remains silent, biting her lip.

"Yes, alright. Yeah, it's good. It's a very good thing that we're not mental cases. It's good, but is it _normal_? Sometimes I forget that a lot of our friends are gone. You know one time I wrote a letter to Seamus? I sent it with the courier and everything. I asked him if he'd lend me… _something_, I don't even remember what it was. I forgot he's dead. Has that ever happened to you?"

Hermione sucks in a breath. "I… I don't…"

Cho is still silent.

"Maybe we're _supposed_ to be staring at the walls, or maybe screaming and smearing shit all over ourselves, just… just feeling _something_. Maybe everything changed us so much that we don't even realize it. And I don't… I don't want to be that way. I don't want to be the bloke that comes out of it with no scars. I think I'd rather go insane than come out of it feeling nothing. I'd rather be dead. And if I don't die, I want a big, ugly scar right across my face. Just to remind myself, sometimes."

Dean laughs bitterly. "The problem is that they don't really put me in the front lines. I'm always on recon duty. He's a quiet little bugger, that Thomas fellow, they always say. So I suppose I won't be getting any conversation-starters on my face any time soon."

"Dean," Hermione whispers. She grew up with the boy, and she can still picture him sitting with his legs spread far apart on the floor of the common room, scribbling on a piece of parchment. He always used to ask her for spare pieces of parchment.

"Anyway, that's why I didn't want the Skele-Gro. This is the closest thing I've got to a battle scar. And just imagine… All because I _sneezed_." He holds his hand up and smiles and looks at Cho. "I told you it was silly."

Cho looks up, her face startled. "I… Yeah. You're right," she says slowly. "That was the stupidest fucking reason I've ever heard. _For fuck's sake_, Dean!" she laughs awkwardly, biting her lip that way she does when she is unsure of things.

"I've got to go. Dorris absolutely _loathes _me. If she sees me waffling around with you lot, she'll have my head. I'll catch you later, Hermione, yeah?"

"Yeah, okay, sorry," Dean replies distractedly. Soon it is just he and Hermione and the muttering man left behind in the ward. It is midday, it is a beautiful day, and the sunlight blusters its way into the room like it has every right to be there. They have known each other, Dean and Hermione, for far too long for the silence to still be uncomfortable. How often did they sit together just like this in the common room?

"Dean," Hermione says. He is touching a finger to the gap in his hand, and he doesn't hear her.

"Dean," she says again. She doesn't really know what she is going to say, and she doesn't know why she has this itch in the back of her throat to just say _something_. Anything.

"Hmm? What is it?" He turns his head to her with a warm smile and she remembers how everyone always liked him, except for Harry, when Harry finally got it through his thick skull that he fancies Ginny. Dean Thomas is a tall, smiling boy from Kent who believes in God, loves football, and is always up for an illicit trip to the kitchens for some sandwiches and a game of Exploding Snap. Dean Thomas is the boy who's missing a finger. Dean Thomas is the boy who'd rather go crazy than be shaped into something hollow and unrecognizable and indifferent by the war. Dean Thomas is her friend.

"Dean," she says firmly, using her swotty voice that everyone in Gryffindor is familiar with.

"_What_, Hermione?"

"You'll be fine, Dean."

"I know, the wound's healed, and they said it wo—"

"It isn't because we're changed. I mean, we _are_. We've changed _so _much. But we're still the same people, Dean. We just need to… We just need to hold it together a little bit longer, because they need us. I'm still going to end up the first female Muggleborn Minister of Magic, and you're still going to end up the most famous illustrator in all of Wizarding and Muggle Britain. You'll be fine."

She looks at him hard like she means it. Does she, though? Friends lie to each other, sometimes. They've changed _so_ much. And she understands Dean's need to make himself _remember-please-remember _a little too well. It's always been a Gryffindor trait, the need to prove oneself.

War breeds an empire of children misled, drunk on daydreams of what-might-have-been and what-will-probably-be, reminding themselves always that no one is owed another dawn. But they'll be fine (pleaseGodplease), Dean and she. And maybe Cho, too. Cho with her weird obsession with war injuries. Maybe she'll come out of this whole thing stronger than any of them.

Dean gives her a look that might be grateful and for a moment she thinks he will grab her because of how much his stare seared unwaveringly into her eyes. He looks to her like he is asking her for proof, and maybe he is, because maybe her words sounded as empty as they felt dripping from her tongue.

"I'm not depressed, or—I'm not messed up, Hermione. I don't want you to think I'm depressed or anything."

"I know you're not, Dean. You're fine. You'll be fine."

"Okay. Alright," he answers, taking a deep breath as if bracing himself. Then he looks up at her and when he does, he looks more like the boy sitting on the floor in front of the fire in the common room.

"If _Hermione Granger_ says so, then I suppose it must be," he jokes.

* * *

She can feel his presence. Not always, nothing tragic like that. It's not like they were close when he was alive. They were just… What they had was something dirty and bawdy and unrespectable. But sometimes when things got quiet, she can feel him like how she used to sense him looming behind her in the classroom, like how the pull of him was hopeless and damning and life-anchoring like gravity. She can feel him wavering in a nighttime forest of blue-green-black, just beyond the reach of her searching eyes.

He is standing, just beyond the reach of her eyes, leaning over sideways like a dummy stuffed with straw.

Could you come a little closer? She wants to say.

Could you coil that way you coil, and sneer, and maybe kiss me a little bit?

Could you make a joke about your Northern accent? I promise I won't make fun of it.

Could you tell me about that big, bulky thing you're lugging on your back, the burden you've been carrying for most of your life? You could tell me about Lily, if you like. You don't have to.

In fact, don't tell me. Because I hate you. Because I don't know you, and I don't care to. Because what we had wasn't special, and I'm not sure we ever had anything at all.

And then she watches as his mouth opens slowly like he is underwater and his voice comes out all sepulchral and dry from a throat that is barely held together by bloodied clumps of flesh clinging to sinew. And he opens his mouth and he tries to speak and his voice sounds like the whistling of wind through dry grass, or the skitter of rat's feet over broken things strewn across the wooden floor of an empty cellar. And he opens his mouth and he asks her,_ Tell me, have you ever tried methamphetamines?_

_Stay awake_.

The smooth dark wave of slumber breaks over her head.

He is gone, but his words stay with her like patterns sewn into her flesh. The shape of him is alive in the darkness, contained in two words. Stay. Awake. His acid and his hate, his warmth, his sneer, his _life _contained in two words and fermented into something poisonous that plagues her nights and keeps her company.

Outside her window the night is limpid and clean like it always is in romantic movies, on that big night that the hero and the heroine discover how much they love each other, even though they've been trying to deny it for the entire first half of the movie, and then they lean in slowly and kiss so very prettily that it looks like their lips don't touch at all.

Hermione remembers that time her dad used to tell her about the stars, and how they came about, and about how their molecules are a part of everything now. Then she remembers that time Lavender discovered Buddhism and said that Zen is when you are a part of the world and the world is part of you, and you are connected to everything in the universe.

And she looks at the stars and what was that term her dad used? Star children. He said that they are all star children.

She looks at the stars and she knows that she is as much a star child as Ron is a nice, sensitive fellow, or as Harry is a coward. The stars look like pinpricks of light poked into hot, black glass, and she wonders how many people all over the world have looked at those same stars and thought the very same thing, because people tend to look at the stars on sad clear nights like this, even the ones who have never really understood poetry.

Hermione suddenly feels small, but not in that way that you feel like a part of everyone and everything in the world, but in the way that is not quite unbearable but painful all the same.

* * *

Quite suddenly, there seems to be an epidemic of good health going around. They are getting fewer and fewer patients, and slowly the trainees are absorbed into other teams, other divisions in the war effort. There are only five of them now, including Hermione and Cho.

* * *

The stillness is deceptive, because it can make you forget sometimes that you are still at war.

The second time someone dies on her watch, it is just as painful as the first time.

The boy is wide-eyed and eager. He is the type that likes to say things like 'just a little sacrifice.' 'Just be thankful.' 'As long as we're together.' He wears glasses when he comes in and he peers out of them with eyes that look delighted with everything, like it is such a great privilege for him to be here with the Healers and the people like Hermione who helped them but don't really have a title.

At first Hermione is terrified because the boy has hair that is messy like Harry's, and it is drenched with soot and blood in a way that makes it impossible to tell the color. All that she can tell for sure is that the boy is wearing glasses, and that he is injured very badly, and that he is carrying that smell of smoke and expired flesh on him that she recognizes all too well, and her heart starts to do that thing inside her chest where it sort of beats in well-defined, clipped _thud-thud-thuds_, and she can count each pump of blood with an intimacy that feels wrong and unwholesome. But then she sees how the boy is smiling widely, and how the Healers aren't treating him with any special care like they would have if it had been The Chosen One who was brought in the ward in a stretcher, and she knows that it isn't Harry, and that maybe Harry is okay, still.

They have to take his glasses from him and he complains that he can't see, but the Healer who is working on him tells him to be quiet because a portion of his skull is missing, and the glasses won't stay on his face.

Everything's an adventure for him still, even death.

He asks her to loosen the bandages holding his mangled head together. "Could you please?" he says. His voice sounds familiar, and it is possible that Hermione and the boy were at Hogwarts at the same time. "They're too tight. I can't feel myself think. I'd like to think a little bit."

His hair had been sheared off for sanitary purposes, and just for convenience, really. A portion of his skull is missing. Supplies are at an all-time low, and Skele-Gro is reserved for high-risk patients at Headquarters and at St. Mungo's. It wouldn't have helped him, anyway.

The boy doesn't have any identification on him; no phoenix pin, no emergency Portkey, no first aid potions, nothing at all because he just snuck in the battle when no one was looking.

He starts talking about how he got hit (trying to drag a Phoenix out of the house, which was on fire), which is bad enough, but then he starts talking about his life before he joined the war. His mother raised him alone. He did go to Hogwarts, four years after Hermione entered as a first year. He is a Half-blood, or so his mother tells him. His grandparents always sent him presents, and he had a lot of friends as a child, but they always made fun of him because he can't stand bugs and there was this one time a worm found its way into his shoe and he screamed. He was in Hufflepuff.

He is sixteen, a year too young to be fighting, but he met Harry Potter once and he thinks Harry is a really great guy for doing what he does.

He thinks that dying for something you believe in is a noble thing, and that it's alright if they don't write his name down in history books because he hated his history class anyway and Professor Binns is a terrible bore and those books are just good for placing under your head when you fall asleep in class. He loved Transfiguration, though.

A long time ago Hermione would have corrected him. She might have even bristled, and _huffed_, or some such Hermione-ish thing that her friends tell her she always does.

"I think it's like... There's a shit load of people in the world, yeah? A-and they all just want something for themselves. That's what my mum said. She doesn't know I'm here," the boy says as Hermione tucks the covers around him, trying to get him to stop shivering. She does not think he even notices.

He is far too calm for someone with just hours to live. Calm, but sad all the same. She has seen people face death with horror tearing a gash stretching forever across where their mouths should have been. Horror is shock and blindness. Horror is completely devoid of beauty. People trapped in the horror of the moment feel nothing but the suffocating weight of the unknown event awaiting them.

"Not even in a—not in a selfish sense, or a greedy sense. It's just…I don't know if I sound barmy, but isn't it what everyone wants? To have a little piece of it for your own and for those you love? To hold on to some version of peace? It's very sad, because I'm dying now, and I think I should be happy about this but I'm not," he says deliriously. She is familiar with his type; the kind that waxes philosophical upon the last hour.

"Mm-hmm," she replies, trying to appear brisk and no-nonsense like she was trained.

Sadness is more self-aware than horror. Sadness knows the bleak lands across the valley. Horror is rendered dull and impotent, and everything is bathed in a blue-gray softness, and in abject sadness your life seems like a story you've never heard told by a man you've never met in a place you've never known at a time you don't remember. Sadness is beautiful.

Don't take it personally, they tell her, because you'll never make it through this. Hermione is starting to see that healing takes a different kind of strength than fighting, and she isn't so sure that she is suited to it.

* * *

There is a barren little garden behind the Begonia House, as wretched as only the garden of a dirty little house can be. There is grass, two aspens, a stone birdbath topped with a crumbling cherub, a lone bench, a brick path with the drooping purple heads of thistles pushing through the cracks. The cherub stares unerringly at the dishwater sky unraveling forever above its head.

It isn't any prettier than the inside of the house, which is all linoleum and emptiness. The walls, with the watery begonia-trimmed wallpaper, emit bad taste like a cold draft. And not even in the way that shows 'character.' Hermione knows a few people who think that a house with ugly wallpaper or artex ceilings or moldy green carpet is a house with 'character.'

There are thirteen beds in the sick ward of the Begonia House, and only two are occupied, both of them afflicted with nothing more harmless than the flu. Pepper Up is in short supply. There is nothing here but a sense of floating timelessness. She should be getting transferred soon.

* * *

She's been to almost all of the safe houses in the past year. There's the White House, which is a bit special to her because it is the first one she was assigned to. There is the Stone House. Then there's the one with the chicken coop out back and the smell of droppings that clings to your clothes. The Streaky House is the one with the bad paint job, like a toddler got hold of a pot of leftovers and given free reign over the walls.

They all look different on the outside. Walls, doors, windows, that kind of thing. But it's almost impossible to tell them apart from the inside. Nothing that should come with a house is there. Oh, there are a few tables and chairs, maybe a sofa. A television, in the better ones. There are also beds in the emergency guest rooms, as well as rows of cots in the ones with healing wards. But things like ugly curtains, or pictures, kitschy little figurines, anything that might come with a story or a memory, there is none of that.

Dean has taken to leaving pictures tacked to the walls of the safe houses he's been to, though, which is nice of him. Hermione hasn't seen him lately, but she can always tell that Dean has been in a safe house if there is a picture hanging on the wall. He hangs them with tape because he is Muggleborn, and he knows about things like that. The pictures are of trees, or people in Gryffindor, or sometimes lewd comic strips. These ones Hermione always takes down.

They are drawn with awkwardly veering lines, as if done by someone who once knew how to hold a pen for a while, but forgot. She guesses that Dean is still having a hard time with his missing finger. The only reason she was able to tell they were by him is because of the Gryffindor pictures, which are too detailed to be done by anyone who wasn't in the House. There was one of Ron, who Dean drew snorting a line of cocaine off of someone's arse. It was funny, the way he got Ron's wide fatuous endearing grin just right, but Ron will probably be confused. There is one of Lavender posing provocatively with exaggerated assets, which anyone else but Lavender will find completely rude. There is even one of Hermione, her front teeth hanging past her chin and a stack of books piled upon her overly large head. There was a note on the bottom of it that said:

_If you see this, Hermione, it's for you. I forgot when your birthday is, so this is just in case it is your birthday, in which case, Happy Birthday! Love, Dean._

It isn't her birthday, but she takes the picture down and folds it carefully and stows it in her back pocket, right next to Snape's note.

She's been to almost all of them, the safe houses, that is, delivering supplies and the occasional letter. Sometimes a copy of the Daily Prophet, which would be immediately set upon and devoured by whoever is staying at that particular safe house at that particular time. Most of the time it is just tins of soup and beans, packets of dry pasta, stuff that keeps for a long time even without the aid of magic. She brings soap, too.

Jumping around the safe houses was fun at first, and she appreciates the change in scenery. She brings all her stuff around with her in her trunk, which is heavier than it needs to be because of all the books she's managed to fit inside it. But now she's read all her books several times over and the fun is starting to seep out of it, and it feels almost like a world that has lost all dimension and she is just floating around inside a glass jar waiting for something to happen. She never stays longer in one house than a few days. And she hasn't seen Cho or Dean or anyone else she knows for a while.

There is the solace of protocol, though. The sterile solace that protocol will save them where humanity could not.

* * *

Sometimes she cannot help but think about the time when a perfect day meant all her homework turned in a week in advance, and all her reading done, and an afternoon free with her friends. Today, a perfect day is getting all the blood out from under her fingernails and not feeling too guilty at night when she goes to bed safe and whole and alive.

This isn't to say that she is about to have a breakdown or anything like that, because she is Hermione Granger.

And the Earth has never been, for Hermione Granger, a cold, dead place.

* * *

"Are you sure you don't mind?" Hermione asked Cho.

"No, no, go ahead. There's not much to do anyway, and I'm sure you'll return the favor someday," Cho replied gently.

This is how Hermione finds herself with a day off to stand with Ron and Ginny and McGonagall and some Auror she doesn't know in front of an empty mound in the earth. Harry couldn't make it. Ron is only here because he knows how important it is to Harry.

They delayed the memorial until past noon on account of more people's possible arrival, but no one else came, which is just as well. This whole affair is supposed to be kept secret anyway. There have been many casualties, and the official rule is that funerals are to be postponed until the end of the war because funerals tend to be distracting.

And so it is five people who don't know how to bury their dead crowded around an empty mound of earth. Someone found a stone to transfigure into something respectable; a speckled thing sitting askew over six feet of empty earth, and it is impossible to tell what shape it is. In any case, it isn't fitting. McGonagall pulls a scrap of parchment out of her pocket and begins to read.

_Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,_

Ginny reaches for Hermione's hand and blinks, but her eyes are completely dry. It is more than just Snape, for her. It is Lupin and Tonks, Fred, Seamus. It is the idea that the war may end, and it will someday, but even when it does they will forever feel its sleety hard-knuckled grip stretching into all of their tomorrows.

_Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,_

The weather is fitting: angry and grey and blustering through the gaps between their bodies. It is a cold, cold day. Hermione is glad she thought to bring her scarf.

_Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble_

His body was never found, probably stolen by the remaining Death Eaters to be desecrated and thrown down a ditch somewhere. Hermione shoves her hand in her back pocket.

_The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,_

It is a white silence that swallows all sound and grows outward and upward from the hard ground.

_Here now in his triumph where all things falter,_

She feels a wetness on the tip of her nose and looks up to find flakes of snow falling slowly from the sky. It is a few at first, and the damp, greenish clots of earth are dotted with specks of white that soon dissolve into nothingness.

_Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,_

The snow falls softer and faster until it is a million greyish flakes floating like ashes in the air around them. McGonagall's solemn voice becomes fainter, the air becomes greyer, the bodies around her more distant, less important, until all the world contains is the snow, the wideness of the sky, the stone out of place in this world—and Snape. Snape the idea, Snape the memory, because the real one is rotting away somewhere, never to be found. Perhaps someone will stumble upon his bones someday and wonder.

Perhaps not.

_As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,_

She wants to weep for him because there is not a part of him that hasn't been anesthetized and abased, dusted and dredged, fingered and dissevered, quartered, plundered and replaced. His very soul was vivisected, the trappings of it left to dry in the sun for all to see. But Snape doesn't deserve her pity. And he doesn't deserve peace.

_Death lies Dead._

He's just another casualty, she tells herself. Perhaps the twenty-third, the thirty-first. Or was it the forty-ninth? She's lost count. He is a memory of black in the back of her brain. He is the echo of a sneer that weighs her down when she's feeling too sure of herself. He is an imprint of thin lips, chaste and brutal on her own. And the _finality_ of it brings a wave of fresh sick up her throat, and she prays to the wind because she knows that she couldn't save him, that she _wouldn't _have saved him, even if she had the chance.

But Death isn't dead at all. He is _everywhere_.

At the end of the memorial she catches Ron's eye, and he smiles at her in a way that used to break her heart. He doesn't have time to stay, he says. He is wanted back on the front lines.

* * *

A/N: Just in case you think it's finished, it's not. I know it feels kind of that way :) Please tell me what you think!


	15. Fifteen

A/N:

Here are the next few chapters, as promised. I took them down to introduce a new plot thing, but these are the last chapters of Self-Slain you'll be seeing for a while. Sorry if I've confused you with all the re-posting! It's just that I sometimes come up with the best ideas after the chapters are posted, and I can't resist taking them down to tweak them. I'll try not to let it happen again, I realize it must be very annoying to get those emails repeatedly only to click a link leading to a chapter you've read before.

I have to say thank you to all of you guys. I didn't mean for that little note to come off as a ploy for sympathy, and I'm not trying to be a teenage drama queen I promise (especially since I've long stopped considering myself a teenager, haha). Nevertheless, the outpouring of encouragement and support was truly touching. It's been a privilege to write for you guys, and I hope you stick around for when I finally get my shit together and finish this story!

Alright. Scum out!

* * *

Hunger is something that people don't really associate with war. War is big emotion. The poles of human existence. An abandoned shoe lying over a splotch of dried blood, a burning tree, an explosion. All sweat and despair. All melodrama and darkness.

But a lot of the times it is waiting in safe houses with nothing to eat. Or needing to sneeze in the middle of battle. Or having a rock inside your shoe, or maybe a blister on your palm right where your wand touches it, making it impossible to keep a firm grip.

Someday it will all make a good story for someone's children. The Second War, they will call it. Remember that time we fought in The Second War? they will say. And it will be a nice enough story to tell the children. They will end up snapshots in a book somewhere, somehow greater than they ever were. And then at the end of the day when it is time for the children to go to bed their stories will be tucked away in cardboard boxes on the top shelf where they keep their old Christmas cards.

It's like how in films no one ever has to use the loo, how they gloss over mundane things like that. The big-name stars give interviews to important magazines, and these articles always try to portray them like they are _real_ people, doing _real_ people things like eating sandwiches and cursing a lot and paying taxes, but it all feels painfully contrived anyway.

War is something like this, because the children will never know how hungry they got just waiting around in the safe houses.

Hermione has been in the White House for three days.

When she got here, there was a little plastic baggie of six hard-boiled eggs and a dish of cold stew in the refrigerator, and around a tin of instant coffee in the cupboard.

Today there are three eggs and no coffee. And she is sick of eggs.

She lies motionless on her back with her eyes staring up at the ceiling. The heat presses heavily against her body and the two blankets piled on top of it, but she is feeling too listless to push them off. She is working hard at remaining motionless. She has never before been motionless for this long, and she wonders just how long she could last.

She is alone in the White House, and it's funny because she knows there is a White House too somewhere in America and the American President lives there. She thinks of the American President sitting in the kitchen, peeling the remaining three hard-boiled eggs.

Her stomach makes squirting sounds in the semi-darkness, and she wonders if the American President would care to share some of his eggs with the pale little English girl lying awake and alone in her bed in the dark.

The thought almost makes her laugh. At least, she _would_ laugh if she were certain that she _is_ alone, and that some Auror or other isn't listening on the other side of the door. She isn't actually sure. She heard a snuffling sound at the bottom of her door earlier. She hasn't seen anyone for the past three days, but anyone could have arrived when she was asleep.

* * *

The White House doesn't even have a sick ward and she doesn't know why she was told to come here.

But it's not too bad being alone in a safe house. She doesn't have to share the food, for one thing. For another, she can clean the entire house the Muggle way without anyone else getting in her hair and complaining about the smell of antiseptic and how pointless it is to clean a house that nobody owns.

She starts at the bedrooms. It turns out that she _is_ alone because the bedrooms show no sign of having been used within the past month. By the time she is finished with the bedrooms, she figures that she has finished with more than half the house, and it would be lazy of her to not clean the rest of it.

She moves to the kitchen to tackle the congealed spots of grease on the counter. Her wand is forgot somewhere in her bedroom, probably on her nightstand. Somewhere in the back of her mind there is someone shrilling about protocol and how you should never-ever-ever leave your wand unattended. But the state of the grout is appalling, and so she works on that too. Then the fridge, the backsplash, the sink. The sink is the worst. She retrieves her wand for the sink because there is a glob of something crusty in it that looks suspiciously like dried phlegm.

And then there are the spots on the walls where the dust has melted into the paint leaving behind a nasty amalgamation of the two, the little nooks with softly furred mold feeding on the warmth of the air they breathe out, the water stains on the window panes. She cleans everything and almost chokes on the smell of cleaning fluid until she remembers that she is a witch and casts a spell to clear the air.

The White House is empty, emptier even than all the other safe houses, and she reminds herself to ask for spare sheets to Transfigure into curtains the next time she is in a ward. She can charm them silky and blue like the ones her mum picked out for her room. Her mum picked them out and Hermione pretended to be annoyed because she doesn't like other people picking things out for her. But secretly she liked those curtains. She loved them even though she told herself that she would never be the type of woman that falls in love with curtains.

Hermione heard that Cho's been promoted to supervisor now. Maybe Cho will let her have some spare sheets for her blue curtains.

By the time she is done the White House is whiter than it had ever been and her arms are aching in a way that she forgot they could ache. The sun retreats back into its corner to await another dawn.

* * *

The silence rings around and bathes her like lamplight. Outside her window the night is a lucent wavering forest of blue-green-black, so solitary and far away, so quiet and constellated. The clouds shift and it is another shade of darkness pressing itself against the walls.

She is sick of her bed.

She is sick of her bed the one with the uneven mattress and she is sick of her room. She wants to leave it forever, just up and leave the White House forever and pick up her trunk and say: It's not you, it's me. I'm sorry.

I tried to make it work. I'm sorry.

She almost laughs because this line doesn't work in the real world. But who is she kidding? She doesn't have any experience. How would she know if this line works or not?

On nights like these, it is easy to be overcome by the things she holds at the center of her, in the yawning cave inside of her that contains all the worst parts of her and they crowd around each other hungry and malevolent and they wait for nights just like these.

Sleep is slipping its fingers seductively under the edges of her consciousness but she cannot succumb to it because she isn't sure she is alone. She might be. But there was a shuffling sound at her door earlier and a shifting of light like someone walking in front of it, and she might not be. Alone, that is.

She has been alone (or perhaps not alone) for five days now and she thinks she might be dead in her room with the American President peeling just sitting there peeling his eggs until the end of time.

It is so very easy to feel things on nights like these.

Are you okay, Hermione? Ron asks her in his letters. He says it in his way like Hermione have you bossed anyone around lately? Have you nagged anyone about his homework lately? I know this one bloke who carries around this Muggle novel in his rucksack everywhere and he writes in it and dog-ears the pages and you would hate him. I tell him about you and he says I'm pretty sure I'd hate her too. Ron says this but really he means are you okay? How are you doing? Are you holding up well enough without me and Harry?

Ron tells her that he hears from people that she is doing perfectly fine, that she is still the same swotty Hermione, but she knows that he worries because he knew how scared she was at first, and he saw how emotional she was, but now she is doing fine and everything is fine and therefore something must be wrong.

But nothing is wrong because everything is fine.

They are in a war and her friends have died and she is lost but everything is fine.

On nights like these she likes to pretend she is back at Hogwarts. She stares out into the strange darkness until her eyes bug out and she pushes hard with the nerves under her skin trying to feel, instead of the uneven lumps of the mattress of her room in the White House, the warmth of her red counterpane at Hogwarts. She gropes with her nerves and the pores on her face and every single molecule in her trying to hear Lavender's soft snoring in the dark, and Parvati's (dead, dead, dead) muttering, and Faye Dunbar, quiet little Faye Dunbar's rustling around in her sheets trying to find a comfortable spot for her overly long legs, and she can almost smell the lavender candle they all chipped in to get Lavender for her birthday but it's not there, is it? There is no candle because that's against protocol because here there is only the smell of sleeping bodies and white walls.

On nights like these she understands perfectly what Snape was trying to say in that stupid note of his. Stupid Snape who is now dead, dead, dead told her to Stay Awake and it is the most difficult thing she has ever done, even if she cannot sleep now. Stupid fucking Snape who left her to die with Greyback told her to Stay Awake like his words mean anything (they do, they do) and Ron thinks she might be in denial, but she isn't because she knows, she knows too well too bloody well that everything is wrong because nothing is fine.

On nights like these when she feels her lungs too small to hold in the air she needs and she feels like she is buried whole and alive and dying left dying there forever in her room clawing at the air with empty hands with the American President peeling eggs until everything blows over on nights like these she reaches into her back pocket and reaches for the note and holds it to her nose and pretends that he didn't leave her to die didn't die himself that she cannot tell anymore where her skin ends and his begins.

It's not me it's you I'm sorry. I tried to make it work I'm sorry.

She likes to pretend, on nights like these, that his absence means nothing more than sleep, and he hears her voice from far away, and when the night flees from the sun's yellowing gaze he will wake and say something disparaging about her hair.

I'm sorry I'm sorry I can't stay awake.

There is a shuffling sound at her door and if she were back at home in her parents' house she would be terrified because it could be a serial killer a wild animal a deranged escaped convict. But she isn't at home. She is in the White House and she has seen death in the battlefield (Parkinson? _Parkinson_? Pansy? Pansy—_shit, Pansy_—I'm sorry you didn't have to save me why did you jump in front why did you die for me?) and she has seen death in the wards and a serial killer is no more frightening than the varied shades of darkness pressing themselves hard against the walls.

When does childhood end?

Where is Judas?

There is a sound like a snuffling dog at the bottom of her bedroom door.

Judas is hanging swinging from the tree the Earth tilting running like water beneath his feet his guts running like water from the hole in his throat. Just a piece of meat Judas was. Just a piece of meat hanging from a butcher's hook on the tree. Such a cowardly knot of tangled cartilage and sinew and deathly pale skin always praying always for his russet-headed goddess to forgive him. Just a piece of meat with grand ideas about fate and destiny and honour and integrity.

We are star children, Judas, didn't you know? We came from the stars. My dad told me we did. All our molecules shared a star once, and maybe we were part of the same star once, Judas. Gods don't exist but the stars do, Judas, and this is my why and this is my how.

_Stay Awake_.

You left me to die you bastard die you bastard die.

_Stay Awake_.

Are you okay? Are you holding up well enough? Are you hanging up there well enough, Judas?

_Stay Awake_.

_Stay Awake_.

_Stay Awake_.

* * *

The sky splits open at the seams with thunder and lightning. Hermione decides that today is as good a day as any to stop feeling so mucky. She leaves her room for the first time in days. The house is as quiet as it ever was, but there is a trail of dried mud in the kitchen that wasn't there before.

Hermione stares at it accusingly.

"Good morning, Hermione," Ginny nods at her. The woman sitting next to Ginny grunts in greeting.

"Oh. Hey, good morning," Hermione replies. She picks up a piece of toast lying on a plate on the counter, not caring whose it was, and tears off half of it in her teeth and gnashes it down. Unsatisfied, she heads to the fridge, yanks open the door, and sticks her head inside.

Slowly the thoughts in her head begin to coalesce into something recognizable. She hits her head on the top of the fridge. The sugar bowl set on top of it falls to the ground and shatters. She stares at that too, the granules of sugar dusting the floor with glitter, and she tries to make sense of things.

"Do you want some breakfast?" Ginny asks her, getting up from the table, cleaning up the mess of sugar and ceramic with her wand, opening cupboards. The pieces of the sugar bowl align themselves in order and the cracks are sealed shut. "I think there's some stuff in here. I'll make you pancakes, yeah? Mine aren't as fluffy as Mum's, but they'll do."

"Pancakes?" Hermione says quietly.

"Don't worry; it'll be a doddle. We've brought some supplies with us."

"_Ginny_? Are you…" Hermione turns around slowly and blinks. The girl standing by the counter is insolently redheaded and freckled, grinning and stirring something in a badly chipped blue mug with a neon green alien on its side. It certainly _looks_ like Ginny, alright.

Hermione squints and frowns.

"Is that my mug?"

"What, this thing?" Ginny says, holding the mug up.

"Yes, that's _my_ mug." She's used it only twice but she feels that she has more of a right to it, having been alone in the White House for longer than anyone.

"It's not really _yours_, is it? Technically it's the Ministry's mug if you found it in a Ministry safe house. You can't just go around claiming Ministry mugs as your own."

"Ginny, when did you get here?"

"Two days ago. Didn't you hear us? I came wit—"

"I've been here for eight days. Do you know what that—eight. _Days_." Her voice is rising steadily in volume and she is embarrassed by it because she knows she is always the one that ends up yelling in situations like this, but she cannot seem to control it. "I thought I was alone the whole time. Why didn't you… Why didn't you _tell_ me you were _here_?"

"Well... we didn't know if..." Ginny says with uncharacteristic caution. Her grin slowly fades and Hermione almost feels bad because she hasn't seen Ginny in _months_.

"We thought you were having some kind of breakdown," the woman states flatly. It is the first time she has spoken during the entire exchange. Hermione sucks her tongue irritably off the roof of her mouth, thinking of the trail of mud smeared across the floor she just cleaned. The woman looks up once from her perusal of the _Daily Prophet_ to give Hermione a once-over. Hermione pulls her robe tighter around herself to conceal her tatty pajamas.

"What? If I _were_ having a breakdown, you didn't think that you should, I dunno, _help_ me? And, incidentally, _who_ the hell are _you_?"  
The woman raises an annoyed eyebrow at her and opens her mouth to speak. Ginny hastily cuts in.

"We didn't—I didn't know how to... How to deal with it. Laura said the best thing to do would be to let it pass because that's what Proudfoot told her to do in those situations; let the nightmares pass or they'll only come back another time, and... But I was by your door half the night! We decided that if you sounded like you were trying to hurt yourself, we'd barge in and stop you."

Hermione remembers the snuffling at her door.

"That was you?"

"Yeah," Ginny says, looking up at her from beneath her lashes. "Are they that bad? The nightmares?"

Hermione's back stiffens. "I can manage it."

"We could hear you moaning through the walls. It got so bad—Laura here wanted to cast a Silencing Charm." Ginny glances accusingly at the other woman. "But I told her that we wouldn't be able to hear you if something really bad happened, so we didn't."

Laura shrugs. "I needed to slee—"

"I don't give a _shit_ what _Laura_ says, Ginny. The next time you hear _anyone_ through the walls, you go in there and you _wake. Them. Up._"

"I thought you said you could handle it?" Laura says coolly, completely unfazed by Hermione's outburst.

"That doesn't mean you should've _let_ me!" Hermione retorts, breathing hard.

"Merlin, calm down. You know, I heard you were a _spiteful_ bitch, but I didn't thin—"

"_Laura_!" Ginny bangs her mug down on the counter. Her coffee sloshes out of the rim and seeps into the newly-whitened grout. Hermione watches as the milky brown liquid spreads out in a widening puddle and drips to the floor. She grabs the plate of toast and returns to her room.

She avoids Ginny for the next two days. She's never seen Ginny look so guilty, and she's never felt more like a spiteful bitch.

* * *

Sometimes the dreams aren't all bad. Sometimes in her sleep she goes back to the time when she, Harry, and Ron were Horcrux hunting. She was hungry most of the time back then, too. She felt and looked like a miserable little thing. All three of them did. But now that the entire year has been transformed by time into nothing more harmless than a memory—what is that term that people use? Oh, yes.

Retrospect.

In retrospect, that whole year—it is strange the entire experience can be hemmed within a single word, _year_—wasn't all that bad. During the night the pine needles fell from the trees and brushed against the tent and the sound was pretty, and in the morning when they dismantled the wards they walked over soft needle carpets and heard the stream rushing and it was almost like something out of a children's story.

Whether that year was horrible, or beautiful, or sublime, it is a memory now, a dream, completely removed from all sense of space or time. It is like a shadow or a bubble; without weight, without life, without meaning. Like something you read in a history book, an event that altered nothing in the destiny of the world.

She likes dreaming about it, though. In her dreams everything is illuminated by the sunset of nostalgia. The pine needles. The tent. The hunger.

She wakes up to yellow-tinged darkness and remembers that she isn't alone, not anymore, and that she has to be quiet.

* * *

The Earth is ineffably beautiful when viewed from outer space, and she wonders if that is what it takes to know beauty. To remove yourself from it. To place yourself far, far away, in a dark, cold, airless unknowing until that heart-shaped box in your chest forgets why it has to keep beating.

* * *

It is hot and humid and Hermione has never hated her hair more. It clings to the sweat slicking her neck and gets all over her face.

It is at the hour when the light is just wasting away into dark.

The problem with identification is that if your teammates can tell which side you belong to from a distance, then so can your enemies. In the end it was decided somewhere in the upper levels of authority that the soldiers would probably prefer to die accidentally at the hands of Order members than to be tortured and starved by the new Death Eater crop. The identification pins were kept small and unobtrusive, and were mostly useful for the healer squads, who went around when things quieted down a bit, healing the injured and transporting the dead. All this was decided with some rather complicated Arithmantic calculations.

Hermione curses because she had been part of the team to make those calculations. She never imagined how bloody _impossible_ it would be to know where to aim her wand in the sea of black hoods and green flashes and steaming breath, and how battle is nothing more than a series of split-second impressions.

Wrist flicks and swishes and waves. It all means nothing now. All that matters is how fast you react, and how well you can aim.

The fear surrounds her like a garment. She can't cast it off. In spite of her efforts, it grows tighter and tighter, squeezing her around the middle and preventing all movement. Fear like an oil slick on the back of her tongue.

And she is angry, and frustrated, and so very _afraid_, because she can't stop her wand hand from shaking, because in the hysteric darkness a wrongly aimed _Stupefy_ can mean life or death.

There is a figure that separates itself from the parade of echoes and misty darkness and she points her wand at it, a curse on the tip of her tongue. Life or death, life or death, life or death, she thinks.

It is Pansy Parkinson.

And Hermione thinks: _This_ is war; when you've got to choose between killing someone whose face you've seen every day for six years and dying with that same face the last thing you ever see.

She aims her wand at Parkinson and Parkinson aims back. She is too late, though, because she sees Parkinson's lips form around a curse and she waits for the pain and the nothingness thinking that this is where she will end, confused and then dead in a grave of mud and rain-water.

But the curse never hits her.

Instead there is a thud behind her as a Death Eater falls to the ground.

"Are you stupid or what, Granger?" Parkinson yells, and Hermione remembers that she heard some time ago that Parkinson joined the Order. And then Parkinson opens her mouth to say something else, but there is a flash of sick yellow and she reaches around with both hands as if trying to scratch her back and then she is tumbling down down down.

"Stupefy!" Hermione screams, running toward Parkinson, her feet slogging in the mud. She can see Parkinson twitching, and she is terrified of witnessing her convulsions. She misses the Death eater at first, but she gets him on the second try. He falls limp to the ground.

Pansy's hair—and it is Pansy now because it is a horrible thing to watch someone die and still call them by their last name—has a henna tint in the shadows and a blond tint in the light, and it's strange because there's hardly any light at all, but it is only now that Hermione notices the variations in Pansy's hair.

Pansy is looking from side to side, her breath coming in great rapid gulps, her chest expanding tremendously with every breath. The wound is low, exiting from her abdomen like a gunshot.

Hermione feels her own stomach tear itself in two. "_Jesus Christ_!" she shouts at Pansy, as if she is responsible for her embarrassing and hateful condition. She thinks her head would explode, if her hair keeps getting everywhere and the dead keep screaming and Pansy keeps regarding her surroundings carefully, moving her head and black eyes from side to side like someone following the progress of some kind of unseen debate.

Hermione walks and kneels beside her and cradles her head in her hands. With fascination, then with revulsion, she realizes that Pansy is crying. Her breathing is coming out in sobs, and tears well out of her eyes when she blinks. She looks here and there, appearing no more interested in Hermione than in anything else she might be seeing.

"Parkinson," Hermione whispers. "Parkinson. Pansy." But she doesn't seem to hear. Hermione tries to give the other girl a shake but her head just lolls over.

And Hermione gets this vision of Pansy in a dark corridor, yawning. It was strange then and it is strange now.

The _Stupefy_ she cast on Pansy's murderer wears off and he hoists himself up onto his elbow.

There is nothing left for Hermione to do but to raise her wand and mutter the words. They leave her mouth without a single tremor, because she's always been good at spell casting. The green heat spewed out of her wand slams against the Death Eater with a finality that she can't take her eyes off of. When he falls, the light glints off his mask with murderous triumph.

Something inside combusts and creaks open and takes hold of the notches in her spine and she can almost feel the blood streaming through.

She was prepared to die. She was terrified to fucking _pieces_, but she was prepared to die.

But she didn't die.

Instead, she is the murderer. She is the one left standing at the other end of the green void.

She tries to do that trick that the Aurors taught them in training to calm themselves in harrowing situations. Count backwards from ten, and all will be well.

Ten.

Nine.

Oh my God.

Eight.

All will be well.

Seven.

Oh my God.

Six.

Five.

All will be well.

Four.

All will be well.

Three.

All will be—

Oh my God.

God—need—_please_…

When does childhood end?

It ends here at the bottom of a ditch with the mud slung around her ankles and Pansy Parkinson's fingernails painted cherry red wrapped loosely around her arm.

_Stay awake._

She opens her eyes to the yellow-tinged darkness of her room and the smell of sleeping bodies.

She is getting tired of this.

* * *

Hermione sees Ginny again and she is glad for the chance to apologise for the way she acted when they were last in the same house. Forgiveness comes to Ginny easily, it always has, and within two minutes they are the closest of friends once again.

"Wanna bake something?" Ginny asks her with a huge grin.

Hermione is half-asleep but she agrees anyway because it is a silly, spontaneous idea, and there haven't been enough of those lately.

They spend two hours baking a batch of vanilla cupcakes the Muggle way, mixing everything by hand.

Later, when she is asleep, Hermione will dream. She will dream about Pansy, and Snape, and the tent. She will wake up and reach into her back pocket, only to find that the note is soaked through with water and layered with flour. It is so badly damaged that not even magic can fix it.

She tosses it to the side of her bed with a carelessness she doesn't feel, telling herself that it is nothing more than a sentimental summary of an unsentimental story that is now rapidly disappearing into the distance.

* * *

Hermione is in the kitchen of the Stone House and on her second cup of coffee when she notices a single tatty trainer lying on the floor outside one of the bedroom doors. It is eight long seconds that she contemplates its presence, punctuated by sips of tepid, soapy coffee, before she remembers who it is that the shoe belongs to.

"Harry!" she yells as she bursts through the door, too excited to care if she looks deranged or wakes up everyone in the house.

The lump under the covers twitches and Hermione finds herself on the other end of a wand and an alarmed green stare but she doesn't care, she doesn't care, she doesn't care. The wand wavers and drops. She flings her arms around bony shoulders and breathes him in and he smells like wind and laundry detergent and something that vaguely resembles some sort of pastry and old sweat, and her eyes water because the scent is just so _Harry_.

"Er... Mine..." he manages to croak out as his stomach caves under her weight.

"Are you hungry? Do you want anything? Let me get you something," she says hurriedly, rushing to the kitchen to fetch him a bowl of cereal. She brings it to him in his room. He looks at her for a moment, smiling, before he takes it and starts to eat. They talk for hours and hours. It is two old friends sitting with their backs against the wall and their arms around their knees, sharing a blanket, and it is enough.

People usually escape from their troubles into the future. They draw an imaginary line across the path of time, a line beyond which their troubles will cease to exist. And then they wonder about what lies in wait for them beyond that line, and whether it will be beautiful. But for them, for Harry and her, it's the past they cling to for comfort.

After a while they run out of things to catch up on and memories to remember, and they fall into a lull of silence that was never uncomfortable between the two of them. Hermione likes to think that she is the friend Harry turns to in moments of quiet.

"It's funny," she begins, tugging playfully at the tip of Harry's sock beneath the covers. "I haven't seen anyone I know for so long, except for Cho, of course, and then suddenly you're here."

Harry doesn't meet her eyes. He always does this whenever he feels guilty about something.

"Hermione, I have to tell you something," he says slowly, placing the bowl of cereal down on his night stand.

"You know you can tell me anything, Harry." She places her hand on his arm and tries to smile reassuringly.

"I..." He pauses as if that big secret that seemed so substantial a moment ago is now turning to dewy nothing too fast for his tongue and teeth to catch hold of the words. "I need to..."

He passes a hand at the back of his head irritably. "Snape is alive."

She doesn't answer.

"Hermione. Did you hear me? I said Snape is—"

"Alive, yes, I heard you."

"Yeah." He places his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, pressing his thumbs into the edges of his eye sockets underneath his glasses. This is a new mannerism that he's only developed since the war began. His glasses slide back into place and he looks at her. "Well, he's not really. I mean, it isn't looking too good for him. That's why it had to be kept a secret."

"Did you think I would tell anybody, Harry?"

"No! Of course not! I only just found out six months—"

"Six months? You knew for _six months_?"

"Look, why is it such a big deal? Do you know how long it took me to get approval for his funeral? And then after all that, they tell me that he's been alive all along. The only reason they let me go through with it is because they thought it would convince more people, the people who would love to kill him, that he's really dead."

"How'd you find out, then?"

"Like I said, they told me. It's on need-to-know basis, Hermione. He could really help out our side if everyone thinks he's dead."

"Then why are you telling me?"

"Because…. I'm terrible at keeping secrets." He looks up at her and for a second it is Harry Potter, The Chosen One staring into her eyes. She knows, logically, that there is no clear delineation between this Harry and Harry her best friend, but she cannot help but think that there are certain lights, certain conversations and moods, that bring out the hero that this world has forged inside him. "It helps a lot to know that someone else knows, and you know Ron. He'd never take something like this well. And Ginny…"

Harry, The Chosen One is braver than all of them, and stronger and kinder and wiser. He is the morning when it's clear; that moment of charged silence between an incantation and the jet of light disgorged from the tip of your wand; he is the part of yourself that you never thought you would get to know. Not now, not ever, and certainly not at this age. He is something that outweighs himself, something that has grown into an entity bigger than anything he thought he could be. His destiny has overtaken him. It's a little sad.

He looks at her warily, perhaps thinking that she is on the verge of another of her indignant outbursts. She's never liked being left out, after all.

"He's not doing well, Hermione. He's stashed in this dark room with only one Auror guarding him. That's why it was such a secret, because they can't afford to protect him. Or maybe they just don't really want to. I want to... I want to _help_ him, Hermione. He's in some sort of magically-induced coma, but he's not healing. I can't—"

"It's not your fault, Harry."

"I know."

She touches her fingers to the messy hair at the back of his head.

"You know... Your hair's too long." She smiles.

"Yeah, I—Will you cut it for me? I've been doing it myself in front of a mirror. It's just not the same."

"Sure, Harry. Sure."

* * *

Later, she will look at her phoenix pin sitting in the box she keeps it in. It is implausibly shiny, probably because it's been used so little. She will think that there is a difference between being naïve and being hopeful. It is a small difference, so small that most people these days don't even see it anymore, but it makes everything worth it.

She pictures Snape, underfed and lost to the world, injured and bloody, angry, spiteful, but, above all, trembling with life.

She has always been the girl who hopes too hard.

What is that thing that people say all the time? That it is in the darkness that you see the light?

They have nowhere to go but up and out, clinging to the steep sloped sides of the ravine.

They have nowhere to go but into the light.

Perhaps, one of these days, she will go and visit him.

If she has the time, that is.


	16. Sixteen

In her trunk is a potion that Snape gave her long, long ago, and she knows without a doubt—with more conviction than she has had all year keening fleshy and clamorous in her gut—that it will save his life.

But is it her place to do so?

She hasn't got it completely worked out yet, but she thinks that it's like with physics. Everything is governed by the rules of physics. These laws apply to everything in the universe outside of a black hole, which are impossible to study simply for their scope and distance, and for the fact that no equipment is capable of doing the job.

Anyway, outside of a black hole, there are laws. There is friction. And with temperature, pressure, and enough time, everything wears down in the end in the search for some sort of equilibrium.

Just like with people. Especially with people. People are the most unstable of them all. And all people want, really, is a bit of equilibrium. There are rules to follow, though, in this pursuit of balance. And the rules that rule people are not laws of fate or destiny or anything grand like that, but the rule of action and equal and opposite reaction.

The law of making a choice, and having the courage to face the consequences of that, no matter how helpless you were against damnation.

Because... This is how things must be.

Shouldn't they?

* * *

Harry leaves the next morning. Christmas morning, to be precise. It might have meant something in another world, but it is all just coincidence. Anyway, they have hardly any time to live their own lives now, let alone shop for Christmas presents, so she isn't expecting anything.

She is surprised to find a package lying at the foot of her bed. It is lumpy and wrapped in the plainest brown paper, taped hastily together.

On the outside is scrawled, in the messiest handwriting she has ever seen: Happy Christmas, Hermione. There is what looks like half of a heart and she laughs because it looks more like a liver than any other internal organ. It seems that Harry thought that too because he gave up drawing it and tried to cover it up with layers of black scribble.

She takes her time opening it. Inside is a bundle of Christmas lights and another short note: No electric. Spelled to recognize your voice. Say anything and they'll turn on. Love, Harry.

As far as Harry's Christmas presents go, this is the worst she's ever got. She takes them to the living room and mutters a charm to smoothe out the kinks and hang them in drapes from the ceiling. Everyone is still asleep. There is evidence of some sort of celebration from last night. Someone is stretched out face down over the couch, his arm dangling to the floor, a bottle of Firewhiskey upended on the carpet above a widening spot of damp. They don't have a tree—or any other decorations, really—so the Christmas lights are looking a tad out of place.

She thinks of what she ought to say. Say anything, Harry said. She feels a little silly for stressing about it.

"Light," she whispers self-consciously. But she reminds herself that it is Christmas, and she is entitled to feel a little sentimental. She thinks she might have said it too softly, but then the Christmas lights start to flicker one by one and there is a glow of icy bluish-white. Glassy reticulated beads of illumination thrown against the wall. Cold and glittering like a sterling-fresh snowfall.

Later, in bed, she will stick her hand under her pillow and retrieve the plain brown wrapping paper she so carefully folded and smoothed. She will tear off the bit with Harry's writing and with the half-drawn heart. She will edge it with her fingernails to keep the tear smooth. Then she will read it, fold it, read it again, and then place it in her back pocket. She will feel its presence like heat against her skin.

* * *

It is the year 2000.

She thinks this ought to be some sort of milestone, but wars don't stop even for the culmination of a millenium.

The universe is expanding. Perhaps one day, another two thousand years from today, the stars will be too far away for us to see with the naked eye. And one day it will be too far away for us to see with the most powerful telescopes. And there will be a great wintering in the world, and we will be nothing more than a sad, lightless clot of blue in a great sea of black.

But they have time, now.

And they can still see the stars.

They live in the golden ages.

And she knows that she is very, very lucky.

* * *

There are rumours circling about a new enemy. It is a group of people who aren't Death Eaters, although their identity and purpose remains unknown.

Some say that it is just people who like violence trying to get their own share of blood in the war. Others say that it is a group of Death Eater sympathizers who were too scared to show their faces the first time around. Others think that it is nothing more than a rumour, and that the war is about to end. But wars are always 'about' to end, aren't they? It's just a matter of how long until then. How much blood.

She'd seen Kingsley once when she was delivering a package to the Ministry. She'd asked him about the shortage of people in the combat division. All they have to do is ask her and she will return to the combat division. All she is waiting for is someone to ask her.

"We're always at a shortage, Hermione," Kingsley had replied, looking at her like she was a child, and she was offended. "That is war. We make it work."

Whatever it is, Harry is ready for them. Ron angry. Hermione afraid, though no one can tell. She is tired of having the world prove to her, over and over again, that every new end is just some other end's beginning.

She will fight, though, if they ask her to.

* * *

In her trunk is a scrap of parchment bearing Harry's handwriting. It is the location where Snape is being held. She hasn't looked at it yet. She doesn't keep it in her back pocket with all the other important scraps because she is afraid that she will be seized with an impulse to see him.

That she will give in.

_Just in case_, Harry told her when he handed her the address. Though she does not know what he meant. She would have thrown it in the rubbish bin had Harry not said it so seriously, or looked at her with such gravity.

She doesn't think she will visit him. It is easy to forgive a dead man. It is even easier to exalt him.

* * *

She has learned not to estimate how the war is going by the number of people they get in the wards. There are more this month, it seems, than any other month before it. Paradoxically, there is also more time now for things like friendly matches of Quidditch or meeting up with friends stationed elsewhere. Terry Boot says the enemy's got tired of attacking full out. They've got smarter, their attacks sneakier and less predictable. Smaller in scale, but ultimately more insidious. Hannah Abbott says that Terry is full of shit and likes to talk about things he doesn't understand. Hannah says that the pattern is clear; the war is about to end. There is something big coming. Another 'Final' something to bring everything to a grand conclusion.

"Can you feel it in the air?" Hannah had asked her. And Hermione was very tempted to say something very sarcastic back, because there was nothing to feel in the air but an unpleasant mugginess, but she bit her tongue. She knew what Hannah meant.

In either case, there is no real trend to war. Sometimes there will be these long lags of built-up tension and nothing at all will happen. Other times it feels almost normal, and then suddenly in the middle of the night someone somewhere activates the Backup Galleon and it burns in your pocket and what follows is slipping your boots on over your pyjama bottoms and rushing outside to Apparate too late to a burning house, and there will be nothing left to do but to count the dead.

Sometimes, she worries about being left behind in the safe houses while everyone goes off to die meaningful deaths in that coming final something. But pride is the hardest thing to work around, and so she cannot bring herself to quit the Healer Team and beg Kingsley to let her back to fight.

Other times, during the lags when everyone is trying to find some way to blow off steam, she finds herself staring out the window for something to look at. On one of these times she sees a bird at the base of a tree. It looks to be chirping pathetically, though it is far away and she can't be sure. It might have fallen from its nest. From this distance it is an indistinct, quivering spot of brown against the dirty white of fallen snow.

She considers going outside and putting it back where it belongs. Saving it. Though she does not want to use the term 'save.' Like its life is in her hands. Like she has in herself the power to own something that cannot be owned.

And then she thinks: Oh, how symbolic.

She doesn't though. Go out, that is. She's already been suspended before, and the bird is just beyond the line of the wards. She doesn't want to get into trouble again.

* * *

"I think we might be winning. I dunno. Does it feel like we're winning to you?" Dean squares his shoulders and blows the steam off his hot cocoa.

George makes a sound that could have been amusement or irritation. Could have been both. "What a stupid question. There is no _winning_. There is just fighting in a war and being lucky enough to have less people die on your side than on the other." He seems to realise how depressing his comment was, and covers it up by choking on his cocoa.

Hermione is sipping hot waxy tea from the alien mug. It tastes a bit like cabbage, but it is warm, and her toes are cold, and she doesn't like hot cocoa, so she bears with it.

"You know what I heard? I heard there's a new group on the rise." Dean looks around the room as if gauging everyone's responses.

"Come off it, you don't actually believe that do you?" George snorts.

"What? Just because _you're_ not in the loop doesn't mean it's not true."

"It's a load of rubbish. Why would anyone want—"

"What do _you_ think, Hermione?" Dean says, pointedly ignoring George.

"Ron said it might be… No, it's stupid anyway," she says, looking off to the side.

"Well, if ickle Ronniekins said it, then it _must_ b—"

"Can't you be bloody _quiet_?" Dean snaps. Hermione glances apprehensively at George, but he only shrugs and takes a sip from his mug. "So… What was it that Ron said?" Dean is staring at her eagerly. Far more eager than he ought to be at the moment, his face pale and shiny as the unctuous layer floating on top of her tea. But Hermione chalks it up to sleeplessness and fatigue.

"Ron said that he's heard it's a group of Muggle-borns. That they're taking advantage of the prolonged war and the attrition on both sides to finally make their move. Sort of like end the prejudice. For good."

"What the hell? So they're fighting _us_? Don't they realize we're on _their_ side?" George scoffs. "Where did Ron even get this bullshit?"

"We _have_ had a recent burst in injuries lately… Most of them are Purebloods and Half-bloods, no Muggle-borns." George stares at her incredulously like she is the one rumour-mongering. "Look, I'm not saying it's _true_, alright? Or that I agree with them. All I'm saying is that this is mostly where the rumours are coming from. Statistically, though, it doesn't really add up. It could just as easily be coincidence."

"You've got to admit it makes sense." Dean plants his feet straight on the floor like he is about to leap up at any moment. Eyes glittering like broken glass. "I mean… We—They've had to swallow the disgrace after the first war. They've had to deal with people like Lucius fucking Malfoy in the top box at the World Cup when everybody knew what he's done. Who could blame them for wanting some proper reparation? The Ministry's never had the guts to punish anyone from the older, monied families—which is basically most of the Pureblood Death Eaters."

"That way of thinking is dangerous, Dean," Hermione begins, but George speaks over her.

"Oh, and I suppose the solution is to start another fucking war? I suppose the only way to get—what was it you said? Proper reparation? I suppose the only way to get any of that is to spill more blood, but as long as it's on the _other_ side of the line, then it's okay?" This time, the irritation on his face is clearly discernible.

Dean suddenly stands, cocoa slopping all over his front and onto the floor. He doesn't seem to notice. "You think we're in the clear don't you? You two are sitting there just like... You think we're home free? Well, you're fucking stupid, that's what you are."

"_Dean_!" Hermione scolds. He isn't usually like this, and, like her, George is staring at him with his mouth hanging open.

"I... I'm sorry." Dean opens his mouth to say something more, but nothing comes out except a soft breath. He shuts his mouth with a click of teeth and a brief sucking in of arid air and leaves the room.

George turns to look at her, his eyebrows raised. She shakes her head and shrugs. If it had been Harry or Ron, she would have gone after him and demanded to know what the hell is wrong. But it is Dean, and though they are good friends, they aren't close enough to disregard the boundaries of personal space. She makes herself a note to ask him later if it is the finger that is bothering him.

She's noticed that he'd got the habit of rubbing at the empty spot like it is some sort of morbid talisman, seeking comfort from the grotesqueness of absent flesh and staring off into space.

* * *

Every so often, Hermione can hardly remember the sound of his voice or the way his glare used to loiter in her bones long after she left him. The deep marble coldness of his kiss. The tantalizing stutter of stopping movement.

She dreams of a body bag. Of a body in a body bag, and it drips red running in a current spreading out below it. It is a Muggle body bag, the kind you see all the time in police dramas. Its synthetic black fabric is thick but not thick enough; it betrays the secrets of the decay trapped within it. There is the most prominent peak where the feet stick out and up. There is the slope of the legs rising slowly until it meets the plateau of the chest. The dip of the throat. There is the roundness of a lolling head. A little bump where the nose is supposed to be. She knows that nose.

The dream is stilted like an old tragedy. She is terrified, but in a way that is familiar to her.

And then it is she who is inside the body bag, black stretching out forever around and around her, her hot breath wafted back into her face by the impermeable fabric. It is waterproof like any other body bag, and her sweat clings tight to her skin. There is a hole in the back of her head. She traces its edges with the nerves on her scalp. It is small. It drips red.

She dreams her dream to its completion, dreamt it all the way face-down until morning.

When she wakes up, she sticks her hand in her back pocket. There is nothing there but Harry's note, Dean's picture, nothing to remind her to _Stay Awake_.

* * *

"We've still got some Dreamless Sleep in here, right?" she asks, on her knees on the cold floor and rifling through the supply cupboard.

"A couple of bottles I think," Cho replies absently. Then she pauses and puts down the Quidditch magazine she is reading. "Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no reason. I was just wondering." Hermione closes the cupboard door slowly and sits back on her heels. Her knees ache.

"Hermione. You... You hate it here, don't you?"

"What do you mean?" Hermione gets up and arches her back, feeling one, then two vertebrae pop. "It isn't as bad as the White House. We always have food here. I think it's because most people are assigned here, so there's always a fresh rotation of supplies."  
"I don't mean the safe house, Hermione. I mean _here_. You hate it _here_ in the Healer Response Team."

"No," Hermione says slowly, pivoting on her feet to face Cho. "I like it very much. I like how structured it all is, how efficiently we've been trained. I like how much we're helping the war effort. That's what's important, isn't it?"

"But you don't think we're helping enough. You think it does something to you. That all that contact with human flesh makes you something less human yourself. You feel like you're hiding, and maybe you are. You'd rather be fighting. The question is, why don't you? No one's stopping you."

Hermione frowns. "I don't—"

"You may have been 'The Brightest Witch of Your Age'," Cho says, making a face and quoting her fingers in the air, "but I _was_ in Ravenclaw, you know. I wasn't so bad in school myself."

"It's a little more complicated than that, Cho."

"Look. Hermione. I... I didn't want to say anything. I know we're not best friends. But I heard about Parkinson. She—I don't think she would have wanted you to blame yourself."

There is silence. Cho immediately looks guilty and she opens her mouth to say something, but Hermione cuts her off.

"Do you know what she said to me when she died?" Hermione knows that Cho meant no harm, but she doesn't get to have this conversation often, and she is tired of hiding from it. She looks at Cho until Cho bites her lip and looks away.

"Of course I don't, Hermione," she says sadly.

"Well, she said nothing." Her tone is confrontational despite the fact that there is no need for confrontation here. There is no one to confront, and nothing to confront anyone with. She is being unreasonable, she knows, and this only makes her angrier. "Absolutely _nothing_. I heard her voice in my head and I... And she just looked at me, Cho. She didn't even have the time to open her mouth."

Cho is silent again.

Hermione gets up from the floor rigidly, annoyed with Cho for taking the higher route. For being the mature one. She crosses the floor to the window and leans her shoulder against the wall and looks out. It is raining outside. The raindrops streak against the dust of the window.

"You have no idea what she would have wanted," Hermione mutters.

"_Merlin_, Hermione!"

Behind her she hears the pop of the chair as it is pushed backward, the scrape of the table legs against the floor. She looks back to Cho with both palms on the table staring a hole into her skull.

"It's just something that people _say_, alright? I was just trying to make you feel better! You're fucking right I have no idea what she would have wanted, because Parkinson was a fucking_bitch_ to me, and we were never friends in school. And you know something else? Neither were you."

Her words sting with perfect, burning honesty. And Hermione knows there are a million things she could say back, a million perfectly cruel things, but whatever it is she comes up with, she will be wrong. There is the low gallop of distant thunder, a clap of lightning. The room is, for one split second, awash with white.

"I'm sorry. Okay? I'm sorry," Hermione says quietly, placing her forehead in her palm. "I didn't mean to—I was crap out there. That's why I quit. I couldn't tell who to aim at. It was dark. And I couldn't handle it. And I came here because I thought it would be... _cleaner_, I guess. That I would be less of a failure. It isn't. I wasn't. It's so much more horrible in so many more ways, and you're right. I can't stand it."

Cho's posture relaxes. She crosses the room to stand next to Hermione at the window and places her small hand on Hermione's shoulder.

"All you have to do is tell Harry, you know that, right? They'll let you back in the Combat Division. I mean, you're _Hermione Granger_."

Hermione looks up and smiles ruefully. "Ha. Right."

* * *

The third time someone dies in her care, she realizes, to her horror, that she is charming the mattress and changing the sheets not five minutes after the body was taken to wherever it is that the Ministry takes dead bodies. She feels a touch of that stone cold efficiency in her and she realises that she did not know the man's name.

She stops. She feels sick. She _makes_ herself feel sick.

You do not ever get used to it, she tells herself. Because the moment she does get used to it, she knows that it is all over, and she might as well quit the war (a funny thought because no one can just _quit_ a war).

She makes her excuses and leaves. It is a blatant breach of protocol. It feels good.

She walks into another nurse and bumps her shoulder against the door frame. She walks in a hurried daze until she reaches her room. She pulls her gaze up from the floor and exhales.

"Okay. Okay. Okay."

There is a knock on her door. Hermione goes to open it unthinkingly. She feels warm hands on her shoulders.

"Granger? Are you alright?" someone asks her.

I'm fine. I'm fine.

"Do you need anything? I can bring you some tea—"

No thanks.

"Maybe you need to lie down. Don't worry; I'll cover fo—"

Shower, she whispers.

She turns the faucet far to the left. The pipes clamor behind the wall as the hot water comes rushing through, and it is scalding at first, but she likes it that way. She washes her hair. She washes her skin. She stays there until the water goes from hot to warm, from warm to tepid, her head leaned against the tile and the yellowing grout, the water streaming bloody and brackish from her body.

She told herself at the beginning of it all that she would never be the person who locks herself in the shower with all the emptiness of war. She told herself that she would be a lot of things, and that she would never be a lot of other things, but maybe Neville was right. Maybe it only hurt her more to keep holding on to the person she thought she was.

"Oh my God!" someone screams outside the bathroom door. Her foot skids out from under her and she barely grabs the towel rack in time to abbreviate her descent. She stands there, naked and soapy, her heart thudding painfully under her ribs, her hair clinging all over her face. In her head she runs through possible scenarios: a mass emergency, an influx of the injured, an attack.

"Hermione! Get out here!"

She grabs the first towel she sees, a bedraggled orange thing, and wraps it hastily about her body. She steps out of the tub and yanks the door open to find—

Colin Creevey. Grinning at her like a git.

She gapes in confusion then slowly dawning anger.

"Woah, okay," he says, holding up his palms to her in a gesture of peace. "I _really_ needed to talk to you. Let's be _calm_—that's it, deep breaths—and resolve this like the adults we ar—"

"_Colin_!" she shrieks, grasping her towel with one hand and making a fist with the other. The sound of it echoes in the bathroom behind her and bounces back shrill into her ears. "Don't you _ever_—and I mean _ever_!—do that again, do you understand me? Do you have _any_ idea at all how much you scared me? I slipped in the tub and could have _died_, you fucki—"

He claps a hand over her mouth. The sheer audacity of it forces her to silence.

"Alright, before you kill me, I really do have something to tell you."

He is taller than her, now. It bothers her that she has to crane her neck to look up into his smirking face. She tightens the towel wrapped around her chest.

"Okay, I'm going to let go, so don't hex me, alright?" He swiftly removes his palm from her face and takes a quick step back, crossing his arms in front to shield his face. He peeks out from between them and opens his mouth to speak.

"So are we goo—"

"Shut up. Shut your face. This isn't funny," she growls. The water evaporates her skin into gooseflesh.

"Sorry," he grins unapologetically. Her mouth curls in an angry snarl and his smile grows even smarmier. "Actually, I'm not really sorry, because I'm convinced what I've got for you will make your fucking day."

She sniffs. "I doubt it."

"Well, we'll see." He hands her a flat brown envelope. She takes it from him, pressing her upper arms into her torso to keep her towel trapped there. She looks at him with an eyebrow raised.

"Open it!" he says, nodding excitedly.

She gives him another skeptical look and peels off the flap sealing the envelope. Inside is a photograph. A magical one, judging by the movement contained in two-dimensions. They always took her breath away, magical photos. It is the Great Hall at dinner. It was taken from the Gryffindor table. Her heart catches as she sees Fred reaching behind George's back to stick a fork into Ron's ear, Seamus gesturing wildly to Dean seated next to him. There is a shoulder that she knows to be Parvati's. She always sat in that same spot ever since first year. There is Dumbledore picking something out of his beard. All of them look years younger. There is a smudge of something, probably food, blurred at the corner where it stuck to the lense. The whole frame wobbles as if there is an earthquake inside their sepia world, but the people don't seem to notice.

She looks at it for a full thirty seconds before realising where she is and that she isn't alone.

She tears her eyes away from the photo. Colin's head is twisted at an angle as he tries to look at the photo upside down. "Colin... I..."

"Hang on," he says, moving to stand next to her to get a better view. "You see there? Look." He points to the top left corner of the photograph.

It is Snape. He is sitting at the staff table, tracing a finger around his lips like he used to. Then he startles, his eyes snapping straight to hers. She feels a faint echo of some old emotion stirring in her gut. His face changes from surprise to anger. She bites her lip and almost smiles because the look on Snape's face is utterly familiar to her.

Next to her, Colin shifts his weight to his other foot and scratches his head. They could have been brother and sister, she and Colin, with the shapeless mass of brown curls adorning both their heads. He looks as if he is holding a lot of important things in his head, and he is trying to find the best way to shape them into words that she won't be offended by.

"We all..." He clears his throat, starts again. "We all like to assign an element of tragedy to our lives. When Dennis died, I… Well. Anyway. I thought that life would never be the same. But the thing is, it was. Some days I forget how he died, or what he looked like. And maybe that isn't such a bad thing. Maybe it's okay to forget all the bad stuff and remember only the things that made us happy."

"What are you talking about?" she whispers.

"I've seen that note you keep in your pocket." His voice this time loses its playfulness, but still is hesitant and halting. "I thought I recognized the handwriting. In fact, I'm surprised no one else noticed. Maybe someone did, but then wondered why on earth you'd be holding on to a note from Snape like your sanity depended on it."

"You don't know what—I—"

"Look, it's alright. I won't tell anyone. You saved my life that night, when Malfoy let the Death Eaters in the castle. It's the least I could do."

How she hates that phrase, 'it's the least I could do.' It's so... minimizing. Especially of something as thoughtful, as perceptive, as _fortifying_ a thing to do as what Colin did for her. But she lets it pass. She doesn't know what to say. Colin doesn't seem to mind.

"My first camera." She looks up to find him looking with an almost paternal fondness at the photo, a small smile playing on his lips. He has a sensitive mouth. 'Girl-lips,' Seamus used to call them. Seamus hadn't been too creative with his insults. "I hadn't got the hang of the buttons yet, and I pressed one accidentally. I pulled legs off of pickled toads for a week and a half." He meets her eye and says this with a sort of sassy pride.

"Look, Dennis is here too," Hermione says softly, pointing at a small, curly-haired boy at the very end of the Gryffindor table. He seems to have noticed Collin taking the picture, and he makes this hideous face for the camera, pulling up his nose with a finger of one hand and pulling his eyes down with the other. Unable to help it, the little boy dissolves into giggles.

"Yeah," Colin says quietly. She forgets to feel cold as they stand there, the two of them, each steeped in their own memories of a dead time in a dead world. And she thinks of how she never appreciated how happy she truly was in Hogwarts, and of how life isn't either despair or laughter. It is always both. And in spite of this, or perhaps _because_ of this, it can be beautiful.

Then he straightens as if just remembering something. "Oh, shit! I have to go now, I was only stopping over to give these to you. I have to be at the Ministry." He places an arm around her shoulders and squeezes, and she remembers to notice the clammy moisture still clinging to her skin only when he lets go.

"I'll see you around, yeah?" He calls behind him as he walks down the stairs.

"Yeah," she whispers. Then, she remembers to yell thank you behind him, but she doesn't think he hears her.

Later, when she is dressed, she will look at the photograph and scan each smile, each gesture uncaring and unburdened and _clean_, each line on each young face. She will tell herself that she isn't looking at it for any particular person, but it is a lie. And when the lie outlives its own pathetic span, she will stop trying to deceive herself, and she will look at Snape last. Snape's lips parting softly in surprise—the only softness he allows to show—then sealing in anger. It isn't clear in the picture so much, but she knows how his lips go bloodless pale when he is angry. His finger going still in its path around his lips. His shoulders rising into the straight angles of his annoyance. And the unseen things too, like the tendons in his thin wrists sliding and pulling as his hands close around empty air, or his feet pointed straight forward in his dragonhide boots under the table.

She will charm the photograph to prevent creases. Then she will fold it carefully into fours, taking care to line each corner perfectly with the other. She will put it in her back pocket next to Harry's note.

Later, when she wakes up to the yellow-tinged darkness and the smell of sleeping bodies, her pocket won't be empty and she will remember to _Stay Awake_.

* * *

What is this word, loyalty? Is it that thing she feels, that tug deep inside of her that tells her which side of the line she should stand on? And what is she loyal _to_, exactly?

She went to war because she is a Mudblood, because she couldn't just stand on the sidelines, and because she made a choice. But she went to war also because of her loyalty to Harry, and maybe that was the biggest reason of them all. She can count on one hand the number of times she's seen him in one year. It's different now, with everyone so involved in the war. It isn't just one, two, three against the world anymore. It's difficult to pinpoint loyalties now that she's so far down the chain of command.

Maybe what she feels is something that can't be described in five letters. Maybe it isn't always just one thing or the other.

It's very taxing, always having to have a reason to do things. And maybe that's what Snape was trying to tell her.

That she should stop coming up with a how, or a why, or a label to confine everything in its definition.

That things just are.

But this would be cynical, because a world without order would be a world without meaning. And she has never been and will never be the person who will be changed so much by war. It can take her for her heart and for her courage, for her soul, for her bravery and her blood and her sacrifice. It can have the lion's share of it all. It can do its worst.

Because she will hide what is left of her in her left back pocket. In the yellow-tinged iridescence of her dreams. In the misty-sweet memories of what she once was, and what will remain of her when the smoke clears.

When does childhood end?

It ended yesterday, a year ago, last week. It ended with her first war. It ended with that first flash of green that took down a clot of black. It ended sometime somewhere around Snape.

But life doesn't end when childhood does.

* * *

Her trunk lies open on the floor. She'd been looking for the missing right sock that went with the pink and green polka-dotted one on her foot. And then her hand grazed something cold and hard. It was a small bottle of gold fluid, a potion from a past age.

Maybe she ought to go see him, just to make sure he isn't dead yet.

* * *

Or maybe not.

* * *

It would have been the easiest thing, of course, to simply stay away. It would have almost been too easy. Too predictable.

And if she had to pick two words that would never be found within a mile of her gravestone, it would be 'easy' and 'predictable.'

It is a watercolor wash of yellows and granular greys through the bare branches of the lone tree. The entire street is dusty and disreputable, held captive in the sly advance of dusk, but it doesn't carry with it the feeling of being trapped in personal space that the other safe houses do. The wind is sweetish and almost warm, for a slowly expiring day in a slowly expiring January.

Spinner's End, it said on Harry's note.

The sky is one long smear of a nicotine stain. The stars do not show their faces here.

Severus Snape is located in Spinner's End, Manchester.

'Located,' not 'lives,' as if Snape is an object to be shuttled around safehouses like any one of the packages she used to deliver whose contents she didn't have the clearance to know.

At any rate, it is completely obvious and entirely unexpected to hide a dead man in his own home.

She had sat in the middle of her bed for the longest time this morning, trying to convince herself that she is merely curious. Because she has always been the type whose curiosity invaded all rational thought until it was simply impossible to ignore.

And now she finds herself confronted with the dilemma of his front door. It is an ordinary front door with nothing to distinguish it from the long row of doors lined down the street. It is the oddest, most unsettling thing, standing in front of a door that leads not to his office, but to his home.

_Jesus_, she forgot how it was to feel like this.

Anxiety beating gently in her stomach, fear and excitement and hot, hot blood rushing to congeal at her pulse points. Her throat dry and clicking. Constant compulsive swallowing. Her toes bunching her socks in her shoes. She forgot how it was always Snape that brought out the most intense reactions in her. Even just by the non-action of being 'located' at the opposite side of a plain black door, he brings these things out in her and makes her feel so exquisitely uncertain. She half-expects the sky to drip down in big, fat raindrops just because it would be fitting. And it would be nice for things to fit sometimes.

She opens the front door to a thick, greenish silence. It is a cramped space piled high with books in crooked bookshelves, a threadbare rug, and a single, moth-eaten chair. There is a browning apple core on a plate sitting atop a crooked pile of books. It is all clutter and disorganisation and it doesn't hit her until later why it feels so odd to her. It is because none of the safehouses are messy. They are transient homes for soldiers and Aurors looking for a place to rest after missions, but all of them are clean, clean, reprehensibly clean.

She imagines herself on the tower sometimes, her wand aloft, her prospects bleak, finding no solace in bespectacled blue eyes that once upon a time used to be full of wisdom. Behind her standing shivering is a boy she swore to protect. Below her is another boy, the child of the woman she loves. Hanging in the balance is a filthy war and a filthy soul. Would she say the words? Could she summon the hate?

Pawn her filthy soul for an inch of nothing?

Perhaps.

Maybe.

Yes, maybe if it happened now, she would. Maybe if it was a choice that big. Maybe if she was scared of acting but terrified of staying still. Maybe she had it in her to kill Dumbledore for the sake of something grander, something better, something _more_.

But she would blame herself for it, just as much as she blames Snape. And she would hate herself for it until the hate eats through her bones. But she knows now that it isn't always as simple as choices, choices, choices. That there is too much in the universe for there to be an entirety of tomorrows hanging on a single decision. That there is a happy medium somewhere between the determinism of a world of lines and checkboxes and the nihilism of a world that is nothing more than a puddle of mixed greys.

In short, she understands. She doesn't approve because Hermione Granger always liked her labels. But she understands.

We are all bound, aren't we? We of the wicked calling.

It is one of those things that feel to her like a revelation or perhaps some kind of resolution. That's... progress, right? That counts as personal growth?

This is not why she comes, though.

She comes because she knows the panic rising to a warm glow in her skin after waking up from a long bout of unconsciousness. She knows the fear of losing an entire chunk from her timeline; the ugly, hollow, bristling feeling of being left behind by the turning of the world. She doesn't want this for Snape. Or for anyone. Unless they deserve it.

Snape doesn't deserve it, maybe.

She comes because _he_ saved _her_ life once (_handonmychest—breathonmylips_), and she owes this to him.

She comes because there is a part of her that is reluctant to bury Snape in that messy tangle of memories collectively labeled 'the past.'

She comes because there is another part of her, a smaller part, that doesn't think Snape deserves the peace of sleep. Because—while she may _understand_ why he killed Dumbledore—she can't quite bring herself to understand why he left her to die with Greyback. Oh, she knew _why_. But she didn't know _how_ he could have done it. And maybe, if she were thinking more clearly, she comes because—in her own petty, twisted way—saving his life is her revenge for his disregard of hers.

The point is that she comes, and that she is _here_ now, in his home, and she will think about the hows and the whys later (This is growth too, isn't it? Acting before over-thinking? Snape ought to be proud.)

She is greeted by an Auror she has seen several times in other safe houses. He is benignly bovine-featured, with his over-large brown eyes and his placid mouth. He always says 'good morning' or 'hullo' or 'alright, Granger?' and he does so now, sitting at the rickety kitchen table, his shoulders curled around a steaming cup of tea. He greets her like she belongs there in Spinner's End, which doesn't really surprise her. She has always had the skill of appearing to belong in places she doesn't.

This is when she realises that she is stalling.

"Where is he?" she asks the Auror. Pince is his name. Derek Pince, a nephew to the venerated Irma Pince.

Somehow he knows who she is talking about because he tilts his chin and grunts in a way that is supposed to mean 'upstairs.'

Upstairs. How strange. Snape is upstairs. Snape is up the stairs, above her head. Snape who was dead is now up the stairs above her head.

She mumbles her thanks and heads to the staircase. It is a narrow, unstable little thing and she tests her weight on the first step. It creaks, but it doesn't give. Maybe she wants it to give. But that is a silly thought.

And then, another door. This one chipped off-white and streaked with smoky brown. It isn't all the way closed, a crack of pale light lying across the landing like an invitation.

And she thinks again: Oh, how symbolic.

It is a moment that is poetic. Or should be, if she cared at all about poetry, that twisting of truth into the colorful infidelity of words.

Is that dread that she feels tightening under her heart?

But somewhere—somewhere else and somewhere far away—poetic things happen. The moon swims out of a cloud. A clock strikes midnight. A finger pulls a trigger. A bird flies into a mirror.*

And here, in dusty old Spinner's End with its nicotine sky and its creaky old staircase, Hermione Granger opens a door.

It is a brief halting in her heart and it all comes back to her. She forgot once but it is back now, all of it at once hitting her like a blow to the back of the head. The sharp pressing string of his sneer drawn deftly against her flesh. The feel of his skin dragging along her inner thighs, so close she can almost _feel_ his paleness against her body. The immense weapon of his nose. His fatalism and his tragedy and his denial of his dependence on nicotine. His ugly teeth.

Snape—no longer just an idea, not ever just a memory—Snape alive, alive, _alive_.

Snape with his hair shorn uneven too close to his scalp, pale splotches of white where it was cut too close. Snape with his cheekbones jagged sticking out of his face. Snape jaundiced, lying asleep and alone in a room smelling of camphor and sickness. His mouth hanging slack. His throat layered with bandages. A skinny thing stuck in a bed too big for him. Static and dead and invisible to the world like a black hole sucking out the life out of the room as the unseen stars above move farther and farther away.

And one day those stars will be too far to be seen. And quite soon Snape will be gone too, without ever having been discovered. And without ever having earned her forgiveness.

Like some kind of Judas taken down from his tree and made to heal, his hanging postponed to another time.

This is what a martyr deserves, she thinks, without any real conviction.

She has a very real urge to flee, but she cannot. Not now.

In her pocket is a bottle of gold. She's saved it all these years for something. She never knew what she was saving it for, but it seemed such a waste to use something so precious, so she didn't.

A drop of blood is all it takes. She doesn't have Unicorn blood** on her. No one does. Hell, even Pepper Up is in short supply these days. But she figures that any willing blood will do.

There is a sting on her thumb and a well of muddy red. She holds her bleeding thumb over the opening of the vial and gets her blood all over the outside of the bottle. Her hands might have been shaking. She wasn't aware of it. At last a single lone drop circles the rim of glass and slips inside, scarlet melting into gold. For a second she is afraid that it won't work because the potion's gone bad.

You would doubt my skills as a Potions Master? he would have sneered if he weren't lying dying on that bed.

It is easy—too easy—to pry open the slack muscles of his jaw and pour the bloody potion. It is a little more difficult to wrap her arm around his head, the unevenness of his shaved hair tickling her skin, and with her other hand to rub his bandaged throat to help him swallow. She tries not to think about how clammy his skin feels. Or how little effort it took her to prop him up. Or how he isn't snarling or sneering like he should be. Or how the yellowed smell of sleep too long prolonged rises like a cloud from his body.

She is shaking with fatigue and shock and the knowing that he will surely hate and ridicule her for trying to save his life with the sad mixture of a potion brewed for an ailing old man with a rotting hand and her own dirty, dirty blood. Like his life can be bought with just that. Perhaps it can't be bought back, his life. Perhaps all she's buying him is more time to kill.

And then she leaves before she regrets it too much. And then she rushes half-running outside and says goodbye to courteous Derek Pince with his bovine sluggishness and she walks half-running in a daze past the wards to the Apparition point. And she hopes that it will work.

And she looks to the nicotine sky—now black like tar—and she has the funniest thought. Maybe—instead of peace, instead of forgiveness, instead of understanding—all he really deserves is someone willing to at least _try_ to give him a shot. Maybe he left her because it was simply a thing to be done and, given another chance, he would have done differently.

Maybe he regretted it.

Maybe... Maybe something took the choice out of his hands just like Manchester took away his stars.***

* * *

"Hermione?" The voice is distant and sluggish.

"_Hermione_!"

She drags her gaze from the floor. "What? Yes, why?"

"Are you alright?"

"I... What?"

"It's just... You've been sitting out there for four hours."

She glances around for a clock. "Oh, four hours? Have I really?"

"Do you... Do you need to take the day off tomorrow? You should get some sleep. It's three in the morning."

"No, no... I—I'll go in in a minute."

"Alright. As long as you're okay. Are you sure you're okay? Do you want a blanket?"

"Yes, Terry I'm _fine_. No, I don't need a blanket. I just needed a bit of air."

"Okay," Terry says slowly, but she knows he understands. They all needed a bit of air at one point or another.

"Okay."

* * *

"What do you mean, a new enemy?" It is Luna that speaks out. The rest of them are gazing dazedly at the surface of the table, or twisting the corners of the files they have in their hands, or just simply trying to breathe.

"I mean there is a new enemy," McGonagall replies sternly, " And we must prepare ourselves accordingly."

"But... Who is it?"

"We don't know."

"What do they want?"

"We don't know that either."

"Then how do you know they're ther—"

"Because the war isn't ending, Lovegood, when it should have ended with Voldemort," Mcgonagall interrupts brusquely. "I am letting you all know now because I've caught wind of those rumours you lot have been bandying about, and I don't want anything blown out of proportion. Yes, there is a new group. No, the war isn't over. Yes, we need more fighters, more healers, more supplies, more information, more everything. No, the situation is not dire or hopeless. Mop up your faces, children. We. Will. Pull. Through."

* * *

"Do you hear that?" The girl's name is Annie, or Angie. Possibly Amelia. Something with begins with an 'a' that escapes Hermione for the moment.

Hermione frowns. "Is that… rap music?"

"It's _something_. I wouldn't call it music," Possibly-Amelia wrinkles her nose. Pureblood, then. Or maybe a Half-blood who's never been exposed to the horrors of popular Muggle music.

"I think it's coming from the house next door. I didn't think it was possible to get through the wards."

"Well, I think we can hear _them_, but they can't hear _us_."

The music rises on a cresting beat. An angry male voice spits out, _I like the girls with the boom. I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom_.

Hermione and Annie/Angie/Amelia look at each other slowly.

"What the hell is a Burger King?"

Hermione laughs.

* * *

Snape is awake.

Love, Harry.

* * *

**A/N: **

*EE Cummings  
**same potion in CH 6  
***I stole this line from Ccognett (don't worry, I have permission). She is an amazing writer! You should check out her work over at Occlumency :)


	17. Seventeen

She'd heard that he was being held for questioning, but she had no idea that they were keeping him in a cell. If it were anyone else but Snape she would have thought that it was a cruel thing to take a man that had been dead and dying and stick him in a windowless cage, but the fact is that it _is_ Snape, and like with all things concerning him, she just isn't sure.

She is here to pick up and drop off a few things and she passes by the holding cells because they are always empty and it is the shortest route to McGonagall's office.

In here the lights are lurid and blunt as in high noon, every spot and pore and wrinkle and bristle stands clear. The walls are a dull brown. There's a smell all throughout the hallway, of rotting wood and souring meat, of scrimping and scamming and resentment. She acts as if she doesn't notice the smell.

There had been a movement that caught her attention. It could have been him turning his head or bringing a hand to his face. It could have been nothing more than him moving his eyes and breathing out. It could have been a subtle dislocation of air particles that had nothing at all to do with the bedraggled man sitting in the cell.

She passes his cell with her head straight forward. And then she stops. And then she looks. Her blood drains from her face and she clenches her fists around emptiness and she looks, and looks, and looks.

He is sitting on a cot, his back to the corner and a tattered copy of the _Daily Prophet_ lying in his lap. His feet in boots planted flat to the floor as if he is about to rise at any moment. His hair is no longer sheared close to his scalp but it is still shorter than it used to be, reaching just past his jawline. It is thinner in some spots and the edges are uneven. It is approaching its old stringiness, though. The sunken black pits of his eyes. The skin on his face that sticks fast to his skull.

It is the first time she meets his eyes in two years, and she wonders if that is why she feels the weight of his stare like a chain around her neck. If that heaviness she feels is the accumulation of two years' worth of... _what_, exactly?

Overall, it isn't an extraordinary sight. It is a man behind bars, and this sight is all too common in war. His hair is a little shorter, yes, and he is a little more gaunt, but he still looks like himself. Like he's always been sitting there in that cell. Like the cell was built around him to accommodate the intensity of his presence. He is dressed in Muggle clothing; black trousers, black shirt, black jacket. Black always. If he were a different man, she would think that the constant black is a form of penitence, less like something he chose to put on than something that had him in its chilling grip. But, again, he isn't a different man. And it isn't like he's sitting wailing on the floor, or wallowing in his own excrement, or banging his head against the wall or anything like that. It is still calm, imperturbable Snape.

Except for one thing.

It is the in the hard knot of his clenched jaw. The prelude to a sneer in the curl of his lip. It remains just that. A hint of hostility, never fully realised. Controlled and calculated. She almost takes a step back.

He is looking at her with this subtle simmering rancor. Like he is literally biting his tongue. Like he has it clamped between his crooked teeth, and he thinks of millions of things he could say to her to destroy her and the only reason he isn't speaking is because he can't, or because maybe he knows what his voice does to her, and this is his way of depriving her of it because it is the only thing he has the power to withhold. His stare washes across her like analgesic, but there's something wrong with that metaphor because analgesic is supposed to help you feel numb. And she feels her stomach turn and the bile rise in her throat—

"Oi! You! You can't talk to him," the Auror at the end of the hall calls out.

She jumps and jerks her body away from the bars as if he had reached through them for her. He hadn't.

"Oh, erm... Sorry. Just passing." She is embarrassed by the whole situation, by the sound of her own voice, by the fact that she knows he must be ridiculing her in his head right now and that two years in a war hasn't taken away her ability to blush and fidget.

She looks back to find him reading the _Daily Prophet_ as if she is beneath his notice. She wonders if she just imagined him looking at her.

When does death begin?

* * *

Fifty years later she will remember the look on his face and the acrid cloying sting of wondering whether it was as terrible, as pregnant a moment for him as it was for her.

It probably wasn't.

* * *

"You're transferring me?" Hermione slips her hands over the cool leather of the armrests and looks up.

Mrs Dorris shuffles her papers pointedly. They are nothing more than lists. Lists of names, lists of potions, lists of the dead, lists of marginal importance. But she shuffles them anyway like it makes any difference. She shakes her head, then nods, then shuffles again.

"You've done well here, Granger. Better than I expected. However, the Combat Teams are top priority now, and it's been requested that I let go of a few of my volunteers to alleviate their shortage. It seems the Healer Response Teams have been popular with young witches and wizards trying to get out of fighti—"

"I am _not. Hiding_," she grounds out, the anger making her voice low and sharp.

Mrs Dorris meets her eyes swiftly. "I never said you were, child."

"Well," Hermione begins, sitting back into her chair and not really knowing what to say in return. "Well, _good_. I joined the Healer Team because I wanted to help—"

"And you've helped _enough_." Mrs Dorris sighs and purses her lips. "Hermione, what exactly do you want me to say? This is nothing personal. You are being reassigned because someone thought you'd do better fighti—"

"It wasn't Cho, was it? _God_, I shouldn't have said anything. Whatever she told you, I can assure you—"

"Miss Chang hasn't told me anything about you, incriminating or otherwise."

There is a knock on a door and a blonde head peeks in. "There's a bloke out there screaming his arse off for some sedative. I've run the diagnostic. Nothing's wrong with him."

Mrs Dorris closes her eyes and breathes in. "I'll be out in a moment. Thank you, Sean."

The blonde head nods once and disappears. The air in the room smells of the sunlight streaming in from the open window. On Mrs Dorris' desk is a porcelain bulldog wearing a Union Jack vest and nodding its head along to the beat of their conversation. Hermione stares at its slobbering maw.

"But... I got Pansy killed," she says quietly.

"Don't you say that, Granger," Mrs Dorris says, conviction lining her mouth. "You didn't get anyone killed. People like you don't get other people killed. You are the most inefficient, most recalcitrant, most compassionate volunteer I've had in these two years, and I'd like to have words with anyone who says that Pansy Parkinson's death was your fault."

Hermione looks down, her cheeks burning and her eyes dry. "I've been here so long. I don't think I... I don't know if I can fight anymore," she says to the carpet.

"I know, dear. I know. You'll be fine. You'll be back with your friends, don't you see?" Mrs Dorris reassures her in a rare moment of maternal compassion. "Don't think I haven't heard of you from Hogwarts. You've got quite the reputation preceding you. Cleverest witch of your age, was it? Well. You'll do fine. You're expected tomorrow at Headquarters for your briefing."

"It was 'brightest'," she offers tentatively, but Mrs Dorris is already back to shuffling papers. It is a clear sign of dismissal.

"Be careful out there, Granger," Mrs Dorris calls out without looking up.

* * *

It is public knowledge that Severus Snape (traitor-hero-turncoat-fuckingbastard-martyr) is alive.

It is, for a while, all everybody is talking about. It is next to impossible, after all, to keep something that big a secret in the confining atmosphere of war, where everyone is desperate for someone to talk to and anything to talk about that doesn't have anything to do with battle.

Returns are difficult, almost impossible to get right. Sometimes she thinks that those who died have it better. Returning from death is sometimes worse than death itself. Solid flesh can never live up to the shadow cast by its absence.

No one cares so much about why he joined Voldemort as about why he betrayed him. For _love_, they say. How _beautiful_, they say. Everybody knows this now. His memories were cleared for public viewing by the Ministry a long time ago, mostly to bolster public feeling toward the war. They probably thought he'd never wake up. The reactions are scattered across a wide spectrum. Some people, like Ginny, think it is romantic. Harry thinks it is noble and tragic. Others are disgusted by the idea of greasy old Snape drooling obsessively over The Chosen One's mum.

"_Eurgh_," Michael Corner spits, cringing and making a face. "Can you _imagine_?"

He leans back and pumps his fist over his crotch, a lewd rapture on his face. "Ten... points... from... Gryffindor..." he groans.

The room erupts into raucous laughter or weak protests of revulsion. Even those who thought it was romantic are laughing.

"Michael!" Ginny says sternly, though Hermione can clearly see that she is trying not to smile. "Stop it! The man's a _hero_."

"Well I'm not denying tha—hang on! I heard Harry's mum was a redhead," he says, his face splitting in a wicked grin. Ginny gets the implication quick enough.

"_Ew!_ Don't even start, you disgusting wanker!"

Across the room, Colin meets her eye silently. Neither of them laugh, but neither of them say anything.

* * *

Perhaps the strangest thing of all is not how he survived, but why he is still here. In the war.

Everyone talks about him like he is already gone. Not dead, but just dropped everything and cleared off somewhere far, far away from fair old England. Maybe it's because no one's actually seen him yet. Hermione wonders if he is still in the holding cell, or if they've allowed him to leave.

She knows that he isn't a Death Eater anymore. She knows, rationally, that he is on their side. It's not that. Snape is...

Well.

He is many things.

He saved her life when she was sixteen. And that is a fact. He slept with a student. This is a fact. He killed Dumbledore. That is another fact. He left her to die with Greyback. This is a fact, too.

And then he went and died for his sins.

For _love_.

She tries to think about it that way sometimes because she has always been the girl who preached tolerance. She tries to imagine herself clothed all over in black and scorn. She tries to imagine Harry and Ron and Ginny and Neville and Dean and Cho on one side, the _wrong_ side, and on the opposite side is all she believes to be true and good and right. And on that side are people like Malfoy or the Death Eaters, people who have never made her feel like she belonged in their world. What would she do? Would it be called bravery if she were to turn against her friends?

They were, after all, his peers and his colleagues and people he knew from school. If he could betray _them_... And this is the part of her—the smaller, weaker, more pliable part made suspicious by war—that is holding out for the moment that he will betray them all like he did the Death Eaters.

But it wasn't that simple for him. Because there was _Lily_. Lily changed everything. With Lily, what could have been noble is diluted to self-serving. What might have been a heroic death could just be nothing more than a pathetic attempt at quitting a world in which he saw no beauty or purpose to give it meaning. She hopes it isn't that, but it _could_ be.

But this is usually where she stops her train of thought because it is a terrible thing to think. And while he made the _choice_ to join the Death Eaters in the first place, he also made the_choice_ to ultimately side with the Order and to stay and fight in a war that no longer rests on his shoulders. Perhaps a man's motivations don't carry as much weight as the results of his actions. After all, what does history know of nose piercings and suitcases, or trick wands, or justifications and incentives and rationales and reasons? History cares only for names marked by great deeds.

She doesn't know if his deeds cancel each other out, or even if they could be called great, but they at least make him a better person than she thought he was.

Maybe there is something that he is trying to prove to someone. To himself. Maybe he is still paying for his past. Or maybe he thinks he doesn't deserve redemption. Maybe it is something like that, and this is why he is sticking around.

He is mean and petty and downright despicable at times, but he is (perhaps) not evil.

This is the most important fact of all.

And isn't _that_ a surprising thought?

* * *

When does redemption end?

* * *

"If you think someone is a Death Eater, do not hesitate to cast. Do you hear me? Because _they_ won't hesitate to kill _you_. Look for the Phoenix pins on their shoulders. But don't. Take. Chances."

Proudfoot looks straight at her when he says this and she hopes her teammates don't notice, but she knows they do. Proudfoot's made his disapproval of her known before the meeting even started. Her teammates, two boys and one girl, all look to be younger than she is and she can't tell if it is admiration or mockery in their faces.

The meeting is ended with maps rolled up and chairs tucked back in under the tables. It is a brief re-hashing of exit strategies and emergency procedures for the raid scheduled for tomorrow. Hermione likes these meetings. It helps to think about missions like lessons, the danger and the risk hidden between the bullet points on the piece of paper she used to take notes.

The hallway outside the meeting room is long and cold and tiled in shiny black. Proudfoot stalks off with a billow to somewhere else in the Ministry where he is needed. Her teammates gather outside the door to whisper about something, perhaps about her, judging by the way the girl keeps staring when she thinks Hermione isn't looking.

And perhaps she would have cared, if she hadn't seen Snape walking down the hallway toward her.

There is a frantic activity in her brain as her thoughts are dismembered and she tries to remember how to use her legs with the hardened muscles and stiff, unfamiliar tendons. The elbows that stick fast to her ribcage. The much lauded intellect that is now nothing more than a farrago of split-second impressions.

He is walking inexorably toward her, his face carved into a scowl, eyes fixed ahead. Black shirt. Black coat. Black trousers. Coat too big like the one he was wearing in the memories that once belonged to him but now belong to everyone. She hears rumours that he is penniless now, and perhaps this is why he cannot afford robes anymore. Arms swinging woodenly and fingers pointed straight down. Someone steps into his way to talk to him. She thanks God for small mercies and tries to figure out how she will get to the staircase without having to pass him.

"—don't think she heard me. _Granger_!"

"Huh?" she breathes out dumbly. Then, "Oh! I'm sorry, what was that? I didn't realise you were talking to me."

"We figured as much," says the leggy brown-haired boy who is one of her teammates. Danny, she thinks his name is. "Are you alright?"

She is confused. A glance ahead shows her that Snape is still talking to that someone. Not really talking. More like being talked _at_. "Why? Yes, I'm alright. Why wouldn't I be alright? Look, I'm _really_ busy, so..."

"Slow down, Granger." It is the girl who speaks this time. "You're looking peaky. You think you're good for tomorrow's missio—"

"I'll be _fine_," she snaps. Snape looks to be brushing the man off. He's definitely seen her. The only way she can avoid him is to run back into the meeting room. The girl is looking at her with one eyebrow coldly raised.

"I'm sorry. I'm just... No coffee _anywhere_, can you believe it?" Hermione says by way of explanation, smiling her best smile and waving a hand in the air in the universally recognised gesture of vague apology. She steps closer to the group and turns her back to the hallway. Maybe if she's lucky he won't recognise her hair. "So... Erm... How's it going?" she says.

The girl shifts her weight and gives her a hesitant smile back. "We were just talking about the mission..."

"Oh, the mission! Yes, yes, the mission! Pretty straightforward, right? Simple retrieval?" she babbles, angling her head to put Snape in her peripheral vision. She doesn't see him. There is the man he'd been talking to, apparently baffled by Snape's undoubtedly rude response. He is probably one of those people whose only knowledge of Snape consists of his heroism in the Final Battle. He is standing in the middle of the hallway and frowning, slightly open mouthed. Further down is Snape, walking his imperious walk again, much closer than he had been earlier. Hermione quickly puts her head down and shuffles her feet forward, trying to stand so her body is slotted and obscured behind Danny's.

"Right. Straightforward," the girl speaks slowly. She seems to have adopted the role of spokesperson for the group. "Well we were wondering—since we're all new to the Combat Teams and you've got some experience—is there anything you can tell us abou—"

"Does it hurt? The Cruciatus?" The other boy, not Danny, cuts in. He is square-shouldered, a soft, deskbound aura to his appearance. His face is pale.

"Of course it bloody _hurts_, you dunce!"

Snape is only about ten seconds away from her now. He isn't looking at her, but she is sure he's seen her. How could he not? The hallway is narrow and she, along with her teammates, are the only people there.

Danny is arguing with the other boy. The girl sighs with exasperation and crosses her arms. She is saying something to apologise for the two boys. Her mouth is opening and closing, but Hermione can't quite get a proper grasp on the words that are coming out. All she hears is an irregular, trembling beat, all she feels is a hot wind billowing around her head and the strange sensation of falling while standing on firm ground. She flexes her toes experimentally, certain that the floor will give way underneath. Nothing but surface tension holding everything together.

"—and I don't know if... if... Are you sure you're alright, Granger?"

"I, uh... You know what? I might be ill. I think you're right," she says, breathing hard and backing away. It isn't too late to run to the meeting room and hide there. Maybe he hasn't seen her yet. "I'll be fine, though! Don't tell Proudfoot, alright? I'll be feeling perfect tomorrow."

Someone passing behind her bumps into her shoulder at the same time that she turns to go the opposite direction. There is a hand around her arm as someone tries to hold her steady, a whirl, and she finds herself sitting on her bum on the cold tile. Her teammates look at her funny, but their attention is soon caught by something else.

It is Snape.

Right there.

If she were to stretch her arm out, her fingertips would brush his knee.

She almost does. Stretch her arm out. In fact, she is sure that she did. Her fingers twitch, expecting to feel his skin under fabric, sensing his warmth in advance. She watches the moment happen in her head, the thrill of a touch yet to be enacted. It is a series of seconds suspended in glass. There is a tightening twinge in her chest, a faint memory of strong fingers gripping her hips and hot breath stirring her hair against the skin of her neck. The smell of him. Old wool and old tobacco and an undertone of sweat. A cold smell. It freezes her brain. Her throat chokes on a humidity that isn't there.

She wonders if there is something wrong with her because it's been so long, and still she feels the hairs on her arm and on the back of her neck stand to attention.

And then.

He steps neatly around her legs and walks past her, and she waits for the fabric of his trousers to slide against her skin because the hallway is narrow and she is sitting in the middle of it but somehow he manages to keep all parts of himself from touching her. Even the warmth of his body, and the wind of his passing. She doesn't feel anything.

To her embarrassment, to her absolute embarrassment, she opens her mouth to offer one word. "Snape."

Like she wants him to stop and acknowledge her presence. Like she wants him to—

To—

But he just walks.

And walks.

And walks.

And then he is gone.

Her neck strained as she watches him disappear into the other end of the hallway. Her arm halfway outstretched.

The bubble of tension left in his wake thins and pops. Her teammates burst into conversation.

That was Snape wasn't it? _Snape_? _The_ Snape? I heard he—

No! My cousin said he—

That's bollocks. My mum was in his Potions class and she said he—

What do you think, Hermione?

"I..." she starts. She feels as though she is talking with someone else's mouth. She moves her hand slowly and places it on a spot on the floor where she is sure he stepped.

"I..."

She fancies that she almost feels his tread echoed across the tile, its vibrations travelling up her palm, up her arm. Like an electric current jumping across her synapses.

* * *

She wakes up to silence and wonders if she cannot hear the footsteps behind her door because they have ceased walking there, or because of over-familiarity.

All she wants sometimes is a life small enough to keep in a box and take around her and live in even as the world looms large and unforgiving around her head.

* * *

The conversation grinds to a halt as Snape walks into the safe house. It is the Begonia House. He walks in all by himself, not looking at anyone, his spine straight and his shoulders pulled back like he is facing a firing squad. With his too-big coat flapping (not quite billowing) around his body, he can almost pass for the Potions Master he once was.

He is wearing the same set of clothes he was wearing in the holding cell, and then when he passed her in the Ministry. She wonders if it is the only set he owns.

It is strange seeing Snape here. She supposes he has to sleep somewhere. Although she cannot get over the incongruence of the fact that Snape is living, at least for the moment, in a house wallpapered with large, watery Begonias of indistinct colour.

He doesn't acknowledge her presence and this is just fine with her. She ignores him. She is the only one not gaping at his face as he enters the house. She is the only one concentrating on the paisley pattern in the carpet.

As soon as he is gone there is a sudden buzz of conversation. Those that went to Hogwarts dreg up fragments of his teaching skills, his favoritism, his nastiness. Those that didn't all know a friend of a cousin of a friend that did go to Hogwarts, and thus Snape's history is reconstructed. The picture they conjure bears as much relation to the real thing as a mosaic to the original. None of them want realism. They want legends: highly coloured, outlined in black, no ambiguity to speak of. Snape in colouring book form. Connect the dots. Snape the postcard.

Her bedroom on the second floor has a window that looks out into the porch. It is less like a porch and more like a little square of cracked cement topped by a tacky bench covered in paint stains.

It is spring with young leaves hanging limp from mostly bare branches. It is a strange thing to reconcile with war. But it really shouldn't be because everyone knows that time doesn't stop for war. It is an underslung grey sky slung balefully in a dome around the house and its garden. Inside it is dim and soft. There is thunder in the distance. God having a tantrum, perhaps.

He is sitting on the bench and smoking, his shadow crackling across the cement. She watches him light the cigarette. Cupping his hands and curving his spine forward. Brief wand flare in his cupped hands. Red finger-ends. The tip of his nose illuminated for two seconds. She can almost smell the singed odour of his vice.

She watches his mouth. The jaw. The teeth.

She is struck by how he seems to fit in the lush decay of the garden, with its drooping vegetation and the capering angel sitting atop the fountain. He doesn't belong in the house, but in the garden he fits just fine. Picture-postcard-perfect.

It is a reflex reaction, more spine than brain, when she ducks her head and drops to her knees as he turns his head to look up.

* * *

Sometimes she wonders if she made up that whole series of encounters with Snape in her head and if she really just is yippy little Granger, Potter's loyal sidekick to him still.

* * *

She has her foot on the first step of the gap-toothed staircase, her toe resting against the carpeting tread, when she notices that he is on the landing above about to go down.

She immediately opens the door next to staircase, trying to look nonchalant as she pretends that it is her bedroom and she was heading there all along. She hopes that there is no one inside.

It isn't a bedroom. It is a broom closet. Musty, close, and dark. There is a jumble of discarded rain boots and a pile of pails. Boxes stacked on top of one another. An umbrella with broken ribs. And a headless dress form; a pallid, dank torso lost in space and time. A vain anachronism.

She gropes in the dark and takes a seat on an upturned bucket. After what seems like forever, she hears his footsteps slowly coming down the stairs, crossing the floor, and heading out the front door.

She opens the door only when she is sure he is gone.

Except, he isn't.

She feels resistance against the door as she pushes it open, and she realises that she has opened it against his body. He has his hand wrapped around the edge of the door to keep it from hitting his face. He is glaring at her. He is unfamiliar to her, almost, because she hasn't been this close to him in God knows how long. She stares at the spot between his eyes, trying to form an apology with her uncooperative tongue and teeth and lips.

"Still hiding, Miss Granger?" he says. Her eyes snap to his, but he is looking over her shoulder at the front door and already moving past her.

She wonders if he has a meeting or a mission. She wonders if he is mocking her in his head, or if he is even thinking of her at all. The fact that he is alive and moving around and fighting is strange in itself. She wonders if he finds it strange too.

* * *

"Ginny. What are you doing? That's not your room."

Ginny's shoulders hunch defensively, the muscles visibly stiffening beneath the straps of her tank top. She sighs and turns slowly to face Hermione.

"I don't think it's any of your business, Hermione," Ginny replies coldly.

"Come here," Hermione says, patting the seat next to her.

There is silence for a while.

"I've _missed_ you, Ginny."

Ginny looks to the side, swallows, gives her a small smile. "I've missed you too."

Hermione offers her the bowl of popcorn she has in her lap. She was watching an action movie on the telly and had a sudden, inexplicable, almost Pavlovian craving for popcorn.

"What's this?" Ginny asks, bringing her knees up to her chest and taking a handful of popcorn from the bowl.

"Die Hard. That bloke's a policeman. Or a detective. Something. He's stuck in that building and some suave German terrorist wants to blow it to bits. His wife's in it."

"Oh. Sounds interesting," Ginny yawns. She doesn't leave, though. They sit there, the two of them, watching the trials and travails of Detective John McClaine. She hears Ginny groan as the detective runs through broken glass barefoot.

"My parents are both baby boomers," Hermione blurts out.

Ginny looks at her in confusion.

"There was this big Muggle war. World War II, they call it. Anyway, a lot of the soldiers got married immediately before or after they were deployed. I guess they couldn't bear the thought that they wouldn't see their families again, or they were convinced they were going to die in the war. There was a huge population boost after it. I see the same thing happening all the time now, and maybe it's that sort of thing. Desperation."

Ginny remains silent.

"But Ginny, doesn't it feel like settling? You have Harry. You _know_ you have him."

"It's not settling. It's more like... like coping, really."

"Okay. Okay, I get that." She isn't sure she does, but people do stupid things in war.

"You won't tell Harry will you?" Ginny turns to her with tears in her eyes.

Hermione isn't the sort of friend who likes keeping secrets, but she thinks that this one will just hurt both of them, and there is already too much pain. Friends lie to friends sometimes, if one friend knows what's best for the other.

"No, of course not. Hoes before bros."

"What?"

"No, er... no, sorry. I don't know why I said that."

"Oh my God!" Ginny squeals suddenly. "Now I _know_ what's been bothering me about this movie!"

"What? What? What's happened?"

"Look at that... That Lance Mooger bloke—"

"Hans Gruber.*"

"—_whatever_. Doesn't he look like Snape? Maybe take off the moustache, and that beard thing, and that... haircut—"

"No, no, I don't see it," she replies quickly.

"He even _sounds_ like Snape! If Snape were a posh German terrorist."

She bites her lip and looks at the screen. She imagines how Snape will take it if she were to tell him that his doppelganger is running around in Hollywood making action films.

"Okay, maybe a little bit," she concedes, giggling. Then: "Oi! Watch the popcorn!" As Ginny shoves her feet against the armrest to push herself closer to Hermione, the entire couch bouncing with her movement.

They talk about Snape, then Harry, then Michael Corner, whom Hermione suspects is staying in the room that Ginny left earlier. They talk about friends and sex and war and how all these things are somehow messed up these days, and Hermione tries her hardest to reserve judgement. Everyone needs to let off some steam sometimes.

* * *

She hears that Snape has joined the Combat Teams. That he is leading his own missions by now, which doesn't surprise her, since he was a spy and he probably knows a lot more about this sort of thing than all of them put together.

She doesn't know why she is paying so much attention to him. Although, perhaps this shouldn't surprise her.

There is a certain tragic, untouchable element that is imputed to Snape. It clings to him and rises from his skin like the smell of sick. People—even those who are faintly derisive of him, even those who claim to find him pathetic, eagerly clasping at his one publicly known weakness—talk of him in hushed tones. And never to his face. Like there is a line drawn around him with chalk, and inside this line he is alone.

Maybe it's just curiosity on her part. No one can fault her for that. Maybe it is paranoia. He is, after all, the closest thing they have to an enemy living within the same walls. Maybe it's just S.P.E.W. all over again, her impulse to stick up for the underdog.

Maybe, just maybe, she understands why he had to make the choices he did, and maybe she wants to forgive him for it, because there is something in the set of his bones that tells her that he knows of no other peace but war. And that is why he is still here.

When does redemption end?

If only she knew how. To forgive him, that is.

* * *

She shuts her eyes and the world drops dead. She wishes she didn't have to open them again. She has to, though. And when she does, the world is revived in all its muddy, violent, phosphorescent glory.**

She presses her hand into her stomach. You do not ever get used to it, the battery-acid stitch yawning all the way into your gut, the fear invading every single inch of you, the arbitrary distribution of so much blackness. You do not ever get used to fighting, even if it's all you've done all your life.

There is darkness and more darkness. In her head is darkness. All around her is darkness. All is darkness all her darkness. She brings her hand frantically to her upper arm, making sure that she is still wearing the Phoenix band and that no one of her teammates will shoot her down.

Her breath rush, rush, rushing.

Hyperventilating is a bad thing.

Keep calm, Granger. Keep. Calm.

There is a shape coming up from the darkness. Do not hesitate, Proudfoot said. They aren't supposed to use Unforgivables because they are the good guys. That's the official rule. In the middle of battle, though, it is difficult to remember these official rules. No one is ever really punished for trying to save himself.

But Hermione knows what death looks like—an empty bed in the wards, an empty pile of stones—and she cannot bring herself to say the words. She Stupefies the Death Eater instead. She prays that it is a Death Eater and not one of her friends.

She will check. Yes, that's what she will do. She will check.

She limps along the mud, her bad leg (what had it done to deserve being called bad?) trailing behind her. Her head feels heavy and full like a sack of pulp. The back of her shirt is sticky with sweat, possibly blood. She hurts all over and she cannot be sure, although, judging by the way she has to focus on the movements of her feet (One, two, step, one, two, step, like a waltz. A fucking waltz.) she thinks she might be losing some blood.

The silence is occasionally punctuated by curses and screams, but few, far between and far away, like a battle happening inside a ball of glass. She has no idea where her teammates are. They were separated ages ago. She hopes that they don't think she is dead and leave her behind.

All her hope is hinged on the Death Eater she stunned. If she can just get to him to make sure that he really is a Death Eater and not one of the good guys, she will be alright.

Her senses are on full alert. Her ears straining, her mouth open. She tries her hardest to be quiet, but her distress makes itself known in ragged gasps and grunts worming their way out from between her clenched teeth. Every movement sends a blunt wave down the bones of her bad leg, the pain concentrated to a white-hot point in her ankle. She knows that if she were to pass out now, it would mean the end of her.

She just has to check, and then she can go to sleep. The Death Eater was short. It could have been a girl. It could have been Pansy. She could have just murdered Pansy all over again.

Hyperventilation is a bad thing. Don't do it keep calm don't do it.

There is a sound, then. The drag and thump of an uneven gait. She tightens her grip on her wand and turns around, but she is too slow. The movement seems to tear whatever tendons are left intact in her ankle and she screams. There is a flash of yellow.

And then suddenly she feels a million hot knives slicing under her skin, separating it from muscle. She rolls out into convulsions, a weak gargling coming from her throat. She is sure she's bit her tongue clean out of her mouth. She imagines it lying there, getting caught in her hair, a writhing, wet, pink, bumpy thing. There is pain. So intense that it takes command of all her senses. It sounds like shrapnel and tastes like steel and the smell of it cancels out her heart. Cold fingers gouging out her eyeballs. Evil gestating slimy repulsive in her marrow, and she has to get it off off off off—raking her fingernails down her arms and down her face—offoffoffoff—

"Avada Kedavra!"

The Death Eater standing over her drops dead, his arm falling across her stomach.

She jerks away and the arm flops off. She turns her head to the side and vomits, getting it all over her hair. The smell of damp and rot and baleful green.

Dead with a sleight of his hand.

A rough warm familiar hand wraps around her arm and pulls her up, her foot dragging behind her in the mud.

"Granger. _Granger_," a low voice says urgently. "Can you stand?"

"What? No, no, no..." she whispers. It is strange, so bloody _strange_, because she's had dreams like this. And she isn't sure if she is afraid of waking up. She digs her fingernails into the hand around her arm and tries to break free, but her fingers are slippery and she can't break skin. There is a grunt as her elbow makes contact with something hard, a she is dropping down into the mud into her own sick. She just manages to stick her arms out to break her fall, but it still hurts. The smell robust and crude. She retches and sobs.

"Ah. So there are cowards in Gryffindor, after all," someone says from above her.

"What?" she asks. She is confused. She is wet, cold, bleeding, and confused.

"For someone who claims to be the pinnacle of virtue, you are surprisingly adept at deceiving yourself."

"What the hell are you on about, Snape?" she snarls, her voice pathetically worn, but she is too angry to care. Too angry and too confused. Why is he here?

"What's the matter, Granger? Afraid to lose a little sleep at night? Afraid of what you might see in the mirror?" He lets his gaze drag down her form, resting it with supreme contempt on her hair. It is caked to her face with the fluids of fear and with mud.

"Fuck you."

"My, my. What's this, then? Hermione Granger using a filthy word? Trying to keep up with the grown-u—"

"_Fuck_ you, Snape!" She looks at him, wanting very much to yank him down to her level, to sit in the vomit-soaked earth like she is. "I'm not a cowar—"

"Too afraid to sully yourself, too cravenly to kill a Death Eater to save a life—

"—not a coward—"

"—why are you even here? You are _incompetent_. You don't belong here. You ought to be back at Headquarters, with your head in a fucking _book_—"

"—and I don't—_what_? What about you then, you greasy bastard? You think refusing to kill is cowardice? Oh, how _noble_ of you to sully yourself for our sakes! What a very _noble_ sacrifice you've made for us all!"

He takes a step back and looks at her with disgust on his face. "Why don't you just kill yourself? You're not contributing anything at all, and—"

"You—are—_wrong_!" She shrills, jabbing her finger forward with each word. Fear and exhaustion feeding her anger. Or is it the other way around?

"You—you're fucked _up_, Snape! There's something very, very wrong with the way you see the world, and you don't even notice it! You think you're so _brave_, don't you, but you can't see that you're just as afraid as I—No, you're even worse than I am." She laughs, short and harsh and fake. "You're afraid to feel, afraid to _live_. That's why you do what you do, because you're backed into the bloody corner and you've convinced yourself you're taking the high route—"

"Are you calling me a _coward_?" Voice low and hardly audible, sneer sharp, contempt potent. She's never paid attention to his warning signs before, and she doesn't care for them now.

"Yes! Yes! And maybe _I_ am too, but—"

"Tread carefully, child," he snarls in her face, bending at the waist to bring his yellow-toothed sneer close. Strands of his hair clinging to his forehead like oily ribbon. She wants to kiss him and hates herself for it. "You know _nothing_ of bravery. You know _nothing_ of fear—"

"And you don't think I wish that were true? I wish I didn't! I wish I didn't and I wish I could hide under the fucking covers, Snape! I wish I wasn't so afraid!" Her voice is climbing steadily in pitch and volume until it hurts her own ears and she is afraid she's gone round the bend, finally, but her mouth won't stop spewing out these ugly secrets, these ugly things that she hates about herself. "I wish I could run away and take you with me, I wish you were a better man, I wish I were—you have _no_ idea how much I—"

She simply cannot bear it. Her voice cracks and dissolves into wretched sobbing and she hates herself for letting him see her like this.

"The world isn't going to wait for you to pull yourself together, Granger," he says stonily. He looks at her long and points his wand at the Death Eater lying stupefied on the ground. "Avada Kedavra."

Dead with a sleight of his hand.

He licks his lips and meets her eyes. The hollow of his throat glistens with a film of sweat.

"No! No! No!" she screams, completely aware of how deranged she sounds as she drops in genuflection to the dead Death Eater. It could have been Pansy. Her eyes are burning and she squints at Snape through the darkness, trying to make out his expression. It is like peering through cataracts.

"Why... Why did you do that?" she whispers brokenly. "You didn't... You didn't have the right..."

Oxygen not getting through to her lungs. Something cold breaking over her head and pulling her under. What is the word? Drowning. Drowning fast and forever, the walls of her heart too thin. "We're all just smoke, Snape. Smoke and coloured water. Downhill. They can all see our bones." She hardly knows what she is saying, a touch of hell in her mind.

He looks at her like she is the most repulsive thing he's ever had the misfortune to contemplate. Then he shrugs off his coat and tosses it at her.

"I will not help you die, Granger. If you wish to do so, do it on your own time."

* * *

Forgive us for we know not what we do.

The phrase is strange in her head, a disjointed remembrance from the time she spent five hours in her bed when she was eleven reading through the Bible back to back. To what purpose, she still doesn't know.

It is strangely, frighteningly appropriate.

She slams her bedroom door behind her and mutters the words to activate the magic of silence and subterfuge.

She hasn't seen him yet. She just got back from the ward, her ankle fully healed, her hysteria carefully folded up and placed back in its box. She forgot to return his coat. She is holding it in her arms.

His skin was once there, touching the cloth. Right next to it. And now, hers is.

"_Fu... uck,_" she whispers, the word torn apart and splayed open by her lust.

Fuck.

As she leans back against the door and lets her body slide down to the floor.

Fuck.

As she brings up in her mind the face of his indifference, the faint hint of scar tissue at his throat, the memory of his voice. As she pulls her shirt over her head and pinches a nipple. She imagines licking his scar, the muscles of his throat tensing under her mouth.

Fuck.

As she chokes on a cry as she imagines his teeth scraping against her pulse at her neck.

Him taking her right there in the Ministry hallway. Her cheek pressed against the wall. His hand clamped around her arms and holding them above her head. Every inch of skin on her back in contact with his front. The metallic rip of the fly to his Muggle trousers. Heat and wet. Then his cock pressed between her thighs.

Fuck.

Or perhaps with her chest to his chest. Her ear pressed against him. She hears his long groan as if it begins not in his throat but in his body. She shoves her hands down the front of her pants, cupping herself and grinding.

Pleasure sounds so much like someone in distress. Like someone wounded. She is afraid of someone hearing her gasps through the Silencing Charm, so she claps her other hand over her mouth. Pretends it is his.

On her knees in the mud. His body covering hers.

Fuck what the fuck is wrong with her?

The sunken pits of his eyes digging into hers. His glare angry and sticky and full of lust, sliding across her skin like oil. His forehead against hers. Hips pumping. Dirty floor under her back.

"Fuck!" she cries out, bucking against her own hand. And then, softer, his name escapes her lips. Brimstone and taboo. She slumps against the door, ashamed and confused and sated, her fingers curled into the fabric of his coat.

* * *

The sound is strident and startling. She shoots up in bed, disorientated, swinging her legs over the side and grabbing her wand. The bed springs creak underneath her, and her heart creaks along with them.

It takes her a few seconds to adjust her eyes to the monochrome notes of her room. She knows she is safe because the colours of battle—run-for-your-life orange and baleful green and last-minute-prayer red, fear in three colours—are not here.

The knocking on her door is hard and quick and straightforward, demanding her attention. She will come to recognise this knock later, even if he doesn't stick to a specific pattern. She will learn to synchronise her sleep to the timing of his knocks, so much so that she will wake two seconds before his knuckles graze the door.

But now, she doesn't know it yet. She is surprised to see him standing there on the other side of her bedroom door. She almost wants to shield her eyes. After the colourless lull of her room, all the black that is on him is vehement and piercing. It's strange, because black is also a lack of colour. The absence of light.

She sticks her head out into the hallway and looks left, then right, expecting there to be a train of people behind him. A delegation. But it is an empty hallway, and it is only Snape.

"Can I... help you?" she asks, puzzled. She's got good at maintaining a patina of outward calm, despite the jittering of her nerves under her skin. She tries not to bring up the memory of their last encounter, and of how she wept like a child at his feet. And of how she touched herself to thoughts of him. But trying not to think about something only brings those thoughts to the forefront. She squirms, marinating in her unease.

"You have something of mine, Granger." His tone is flat and uninterested.

She looks down at herself. She is wearing an oversized shirt that she's had since she was seven. It is a washed-out black, with a picture of a blimp looming ominously over the corner of a high-rise building. 'Led Zeppelin,' it is stamped in bold red letters. She thinks it was her dad's. She looks back at Snape to find him looking at her with his eyebrow partially raised, as if he changed his mind about it halfway.

"My _coat_," he says, looking at her like he doesn't expect her to know what a coat is.

"Oh! Hold on, let me get it for you. Just, er... just wait here." She wonders if she ought to close the door or leave it open. The thought of him seeing the contents of her room, bare as it is, of watching her as she rifles around for his coat, makes her strangely embarrassed. She settles for pushing the door slightly with her foot as she turns, trying to make it look as if the movement were accidental.

Of course, she knows exactly where the coat is. 'The Coat,' it is labeled in her brain. It is folded neatly at the bottom of her trunk, where she keeps things that she does not like to think about too often. Sometimes she thinks she'd like to crawl into that space, pull her clothing up and around herself until she is indistinguishable from the junk she likes to lug around with her. She thinks about this only sometimes, though. It's not like she's depressed or anything.

She retrieves The Coat. Through the crack in the door she notices that he has his fingers pinched around the bridge of his nose, his eyes squeezed shut. He straightens when she pulls the door open and sneers at her, snatching The Coat from her fingers without waiting for her to hand it over. The movements are fluid as always, but he ruins the effect by holding The Coat awkwardly in front of his body. He does not put it on.

"Get dressed," he sneers, giving her shirt a look that would have ground a diamond into dust. "You're expected in a meeting in twenty minutes."

She blinks at him, noticing for the first time how pink his cheeks are. It must be the cold. The Stone House doesn't have very good ventilation. Or something.

"A meeting? But I wasn't told."

"I'm telling you now," he snaps.

"But there wasn't anything scheduled. Proudfoot would have told me; _he's_ my team leader, and I'm sure he would have let me know beforehand. I don't understan—"

"Miss Granger!" he barks. It startles her into silence. Not so much his tone—she is used to that—but the 'Miss' tacked on to her name like a badge of inadequacy. "Perhaps if you didn't like hearing the sound of your own voice so much, you'd _understand_ a few more things. Proudfoot is no longer your team leader. You've been moved to another team."

"But _why_? I've only done two retrievals, and both of them went well! Is the whole team being redistributed, or only me? Why do I—"

"I'm sure I don't give a fuck, Granger. Just be sure you're at that meeting, or redistribution will be the least of your concerns," he says, looking very much like he'd take great pleasure in redistributing her into particles. Enzymes and hormones. Atoms and molecules and ions. Protons, neutrons. Quarks. Until she is nothing but nothing.

She raises an eyebrow right back at him, determined not to be cowed. The trick is not to get angry. The trick is to appear to be as uncaring, as invulnerable as he is, like she is covered in a layer of glass. It is all raindrops, his words, and they slide off of her and leave no trace.

"Well, thanks for telling me, I suppose," she says coolly. "But if not Proudfoot, then who?"

Dammit, Granger. You're not supposed to _care_. Stop asking questions.

"You'll find out at the meeting." Something in the set of his jaw tells her that he won't be answering any more questions.

"Fine," she says sullenly. If she can't affect his indifference, she can at least be sullen. It's better than nothing. "The new leader better not be as much of an arsehole as Proudfoot was. Anyone would be better than Proudfoot."

He curls his lip at her. "Every silver lining has its cloud," he says with cryptic grimness, turning at his heel and leaving her staring perplexedly at the negative space that he leaves behind.

"Hey, Snape!" she calls out before she can stop herself. He stops, but he doesn't turn around.

"Thanks for the coat." She bites her lip. It is a wan, bluish light framing his figure in the narrow hallway. Cold blue against cold black.

"And, er... I'm sorry for breaking down on you like that. I'm not like that. I'm stronger than that. I mean, you _did_ sort of deserve it for being an arsehole, and I'm not implying that we're friends or anything..." she trails off, blushing hotly at the memories suddenly dragged to the forefront of her brain. Muted yellows and golds flung across his pale skin like melted butter. Old scars. The notches of his spine, and the space between his ribs. Muscles tensing and flexing something lovely. The meeting of lips, awkward intrepid and heartbreaking. The decadence of a time past.

And a secret she's carried with her all along: his coat smells like his skin. Like smoke in winter. Like wet leaves burning in a low fire. Like rain falling on frozen earth, with dead bare branches slicing into a pale moon.

"What I'm trying to say is that I'm not... I don't know if I've forgiven you yet, but I don't want you to die, and I'm glad you're not. Dead, I mean."

He turns back with his lips curled into the familiar set of his scornful gall, his shoulders stiff. "I don't want your—"

She meets his eyes and, strangely, he cuts himself off. Closes his lips around his bared teeth. Clenches his jaw. Turns his head the tiniest fraction so that it is only the high curve of his cheekbone that she sees.

"I don't... I never wished for your death either, Miss Granger." His voice is slow. Halting. She doesn't know what to make of it.

When he leaves he will take the smell with him, and she will look down at her hands and try to think if there is a difference between colourlessness and the absence of light.

* * *

A/N:  
*If you didn't get the joke, Alan Rickman was the actor who played Hans Gruber in Die Hard :)  
**Sylvia Plath

This is the last chapter I'll be posting for a while, but just to make things clear, I will not be abandoning this story. I will be back sometime later to shove angst down your collective throats! :)

I have no words for you guys, honestly. It's such a pleasure to write for readers as appreciative, as giving, as supportive as you are. Thank you, thank you, thank you.


	18. Eighteen

The cloud turns out to be Snape. Of course. What else could it have been?

She's been put in a team with Danny and the desk bound boy, a girl with glasses named Marge, Terry Boot, Luna Lovegood, two Aurors, and a surly, touch-me-not Snape.

She doesn't know how to feel about the fact that Snape was the one who picked the team members. Flattery wrestles with suspicion in her head, with a touch of aching confusion trying to get in on the action, until she decides not to think about it because maybe then she wouldn't have to feel. Any feeling—no matter how thick it swells and beats against your ribs—can be tamped down into the dust, if you deny it for long enough.

The two Aurors aren't really keen on Snape being the leader. In fact, no one is keen on following Snape into battle. Or into anything at all, for that matter.

His reputation as a hero is most flattering when viewed from a distance and girdled by the protective insulation of the third person objective. Snape the anti-hero, Snape the tragedy, Snape the lovelorn fool—everything that went into his persona made up of nothing more than 'he saids' and 'she saids.'

Because Snape is a legend. Legends don't make good drinking mates. They don't make good friends. They belong on their own separate rung, a set of curios breathing in their own souring air under a bell jar. You can certainly look, if you'd like. Be careful, though. If you get too close, you'd be able to read the fine print, and you might not care for the unadorned truths you'll find there.

Hermione taps her foot. The meeting room smells of whiteboard marker and sweat. She is impatient, and hungry, and discussing strategy always tightens her stomach. She feels the need for the taste of clean oxygen. She'll give anything for a mug of something hot and caffeine-infused, and for Terry and the two Aurors to stop making sarcastic quips every time Snape says something.

"It's not like Snape doesn't know what he's doing," she snaps loudly before she can help herself, her voice cutting straight through the simmer of antipathy saturating the atmosphere. Everyone stops arguing and turns to look at her. Everyone but Snape. One of the Aurors raises his brow at her and she glares back.

_He_ acts as if no one had spoken, and the meeting resumes in relative equanimity. His knuckles are white around the back of a chair, that hard knot in his jaw pulsing tense under pale skin. A greyish vein throbs in his temple. She spends the rest of the meeting contemplating which action would show more weakness: looking at him, or trying not to look.

The meeting ends. Hermione finds herself caught up in the shuffle of movement, and she has her hand on the doorknob when she hears his voice.

"Miss Granger, a word."

"Yes, Professor," she replies automatically. Her eyes slide up to meet his over the notebook in her arms as she realises her mistake. It is a brittle anger condensed into a cold black stare that washes across her face, and she knows that he thinks she is mocking him. Behind Snape, one of the two Aurors—the one who raised his eyebrow at her—is smirking fatuously. The other is picking at his nails with a ballpoint pen.

Hermione hovers in the corner and pretends to re-shuffle her notes as Snape convenes with the Aurors. Then there is a cold draught and a sudden welling of sound from the hallway as the door opens. She imagines a conversation layered in double-meanings and synthetic civility—judging by the hard slam of the door—as the Aurors leave.

They are alone in the room now, Snape and she. She is determined to keep her eyes on her notes for as long as it wouldn't be deemed an attempt at evasion. The notes are colour-coded. She busies herself with the significance of each color, running through the list in her brain. Overhead, the single bare bulb swings on its cord. The yellow circle of light traipses lethargically over the hard surfaces in the meeting room.

"What do you mean by it, Granger?" His voice is gristled, low, controlled.

Hermione stares at her bullet points for a second longer, looking for composure between the straight blue lines of her store-bought composition notebook. She finds it.

When she looks up, her jaw is clenched, her mouth stiff. "By what?"

Snape closes his eyes and breathes out.

"_Don't_ play stupid!" he snarls suddenly, bringing his palm down to the table. The whole thing—cheap, formica, lightweight—shivers under his hand. "What was it you called me? The greasy coward, the_noble_ bastard backed into a fucking corner? That sound about accurate to you?"

It is always like this with him. The two of them locked in a vacuum of spite and resentment and something else that she refuses to name. The wavering light stirs up some simulacrum of emotion on the planes of his face. Yellow is not his colour.

"I was only trying to get the meeting going," she retorts, her fingers tightening around the spine of her notebook. "What the bloody hell are you even on about? It's not like I was jumping at the chance to defend your sorry hi—"

"All I need from you," he says coldly, drawing himself up and glaring down his nose, "is for you to keep your presumptuous, underdeveloped head out of it, and to keep your flapping maw _shut_—"

"Oh, you are so _full_ of it! Why do you always have to react this way? Why is it always so bloody _difficult_ with you? I don't know why I—"

"If you think—"

"No! _Let me speak_!" she yells. The sound is louder than she intended it to be. Snape looks surprised, and this surprises her. She really should just stop talking. But again—inexplicably, infuriatingly—it's always like this with Snape. She always goes with the thing that she isn't supposed to do.

"I am _sick_ of this. You don't even know what I've done… what I've _been through_… and you have no right to… to… Why can't you just say _thank you_ like a normal bloody person and—"

Hermione cuts herself short at the look on his face. She remembers that he doesn't know who it was that saved his life, and she still doesn't know how to feel about that.

If she did the right thing in saving him.

(Of course, of course. How could it not have been right?)

If she had the right motivations for saving him.

(You would have done it for anyone else.)

If she _wanted_ to pull out that thank you from between his lips.

(In her dreams last night: _Thank you_, Hermione. Let me… _repay_ you. Let me… _taste_ you…)

If she should even think of it as 'saving' him.

(Save him for what? For a rainy day?)

And in that lurid interval of unwanted thought, she gets the feeling that all the uncomfortable suspicions that she had about herself were coming true. That she took a dead man and stuck him together with spit and string for her own selfish purposes.

Hermione no longer remembers what she wants to say. Snape—apparently taken aback by her outburst—remains silent and seething. The sound of silver rings through her head, and she gets a brief impression of the way his skin smelled when it was pressed to hers—a scent musky-sweet and clean that she wants to tongue into the inside of her cheek.

It isn't all that difficult to turn and leave him there. She's always been pretty good at denying things.

She thinks that it feels good to be the one storming away. To be the one kicking the door shut behind her.

* * *

"Pay attention, Granger!" The Auror screams at her.

"Yes, yes, sorry!" She rubs the burn on her ear where a curse almost took it off. The Auror stares at her hard as if to make sure that she isn't trying to kill herself. They are cowering—the Auror, Hermione, and her teammates—their knees digging into the mud behind a partially collapsed brick wall. There is the smell of crushed weeds, untended corners, piss, and fear. It is something that comes naturally, even to people who haven't been in the Combat Teams for a long time. The ability to hide.

But apart from this, nothing else is natural.

Everything is all booming sound and painful flashes that reverberate across her eardrums and wad into her closed eyelids. Her lungs are slopped with the dust from the ground and the broken wall. Beside her, the girl—Marge—is breathing fast with her fist jammed into her mouth in an attempt to keep quiet. Marge's eyes are big and doubtful behind her glasses, as if not really believing where she is at the moment. Snape and the others have been separated. There is something wet sliding down Hermione's arm where she was hit with a rock earlier. In between the coughing-up and the slipping-in, there is trying to remember how to breathe with lungs stiffened by fear. These are the things that aren't covered in the meetings. How are those bullet points working out for you?

The Auror makes the hand signal telling them to move. He pivots on his feet, peeks around the wall, and moves like a cat to take cover on the other side. A carelessly flung Cruciatus almost catches him by the ankle. He ducks behind a pile of rocks and glares at them impatiently, mouthing the words _move, you fucking idiots!_ Hermione grabs the elbow closest to her, Danny's, she thinks, and nods at the Auror.

Danny lurches forward on the momentum and sways on his knees. He vomits into the mud. She lets go of his arm. Splash of green bile hanging suspended in the air for a scant second like sediment in a pond.

"Fuck," he whispers.

"_Jesus_," the other boy—the deskbound one whose name she never thought to ask—whispers back. His face is yellowed and horror-stricken in a way that Hermione never wants to remember. "I'm... I'm scared."

The panic is a solid entity and massive in scope, drowning out all other emotion with its gravitational pull.

"Shit!" Hermione snaps angrily, trying not to show that she is just as scared. She is furious with the deskbound boy for acknowledging the dread they all hold in their stomachs. Furious that he is allowed to acknowledge it. Furious that she is the one they are looking to for consolation. "Don't you lot go through training anymore?"

Panic fluttering at the edge of her brain like a moth.

The Auror looks back and sneers and starts to say something. He is brusque and mean, but his style of motivation is the kind that gets hearts pounding and feet moving. There is a flash of green and a meaty thud. Hermione knows, without looking, that the Auror is dead.

Marge screams.

Hermione digs in deep into her brain—that much vaunted intellect of hers—pulling up emergency procedures, exit strategies, bullet points, all of which float useless to the floor in the face of spells aimed to kill, thudding against the brick wall like applause.

Straightforward in and out, they said. Simple retrieval, they said. What they found was an ambush, and they never stood a chance.

Hermione reaches out and grabs Marge by the sweat-slicked wrist and pulls so Marge's ear is next to her mouth.

"Get back to Headquarters!" Hermione yells over the din. "Take Danny and the other boy with you! I'll stay and call for backup." She digs deep in her pockets waiting for the cold touch of the Backup Galleon.

Panic flowing dirty under her skin like rainwater.

Marge swallows. Nods. Fumbles for her Emergency Portkey. Then the last thing Hermione sees are Marge's widening eyes as she feels her spine snap into unnatural straightness and she keels over forwards, half her face smeared in mud and sick.

_Shit_, she thinks, because her teammates are really just children still, just little children trying to act all grown up and they won't have the chance to carry on their little charade because they will die here.

Here.

In this grave of mud and dust and rainwater.

And so will she.

She is turned roughly onto her back and she waits for the flash of green. For a white mask looming over her. For the cold splatter of oblivion across her existence.

Instead, it is an armful of cooked-looking blonde curls and the scent of shampoo. The scent is flowery and perplexingly strong, even through the undertones of rust and mud and burnt hair.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Lavender sobs, big fat tears falling to Hermione's face. "I couldn't see... I thought you were—and then I—"

She un-freezes Hermione with a frantic swish and flick.

Hermione is angrier than she remembers being, because Lavender made a stupid mistake that could have cost her her life, because she is filthy, because she was confronted by imminent death and found that she wasn't ready, after all. But mostly because Hermione knows that Lavender's clumsiness is _her_ clumsiness—that Hermione has done the same thing many times before—and she doesn't really have a right to be angry. It is with perverse, reluctant relief that Hermione notes that none of them really know what they are doing, and they all occupy the same plane of deep and painful confusion.

"It's alright," Hermione chatters out, her jaw tight with the aftereffects of a Body Bind. "Just be careful next ti—"

"Make sure there _isn't_ a next time, Brown," a low voice says next to Hermione's ear. A wiry hand at the front of her shirt tugs her upright

"Yes, yes, sorry, Profe—sir," Hermione hears Lavender squeak, and then there is Snape, his hair matted to his head with sweat and blood and who knows what else, a long smear of mud bisecting his face, cutting diagonally across his bony nose.

"Wha—"

"Shut up and pay attention, Granger, or it won't be—"

He flinches when she raises her wand in his direction.

"Avada Kedavra," she whispers, her tongue feeling like wood, her wand arm heavy. The Death Eater aiming at his back crumples to the ground.

She can feel his stare like the touch of a scalpel. "Thank you," he rasps out, seemingly without thinking. The hand wrapped around shirt pushes her back down and he moves away. It is strange to see him hunching behind the brick wall. Danny and the other boy seem to think so too. They watch him like he is some sort of freak show.

Snape licks his lips, aims over the wall, kills a Death Eater. His movements are quick and decisive and practiced and chilling. He meets her eyes again as if daring her to say something.

She shakes her head. Indicating what, she doesn't really know.

* * *

The retrieval was successful, despite the ambush. Successful meaning only one person died, and the rest of the injuries were nothing life-threatening or permanently disfiguring. Still, a success is a success, and they will take what they can get.

News of it travels quickly around the safehouses. Hermione overhears her name flung around here and there because it was she that found the documents that the Death Eaters stashed under the sink at the house they were raiding. They contained a wealth of information—plans, safehouse locations, targets.

In the de-briefing, McGonagall holds her back. "Don't let it get to your head, Granger," she says sternly. And then, with a hard-veined hand to Hermione's wrist, "Good job."

War is sloppy and unpredictable. Bullet points only last as long as you are in the meeting room. In battle they run through and out her head like smoke. Like coloured water. Forever streaming downhill.

But still Hermione finds that she is smiling to herself as she closes McGonagall's door behind her. She is a little embarrassed when Collin later points out that she's been twirling a lock of her hair for the past thirty minutes—something she's never done, not since Hogwarts.

* * *

"It feels different, doesn't it?" Hermione means nothing bigger than the weather because today was particularly humid for January, but she realises as soon as she says it that her question carries so much more weight in the secret world of things unsaid. Neville doesn't answer for a while. Then he nods, reassuring himself of some internal truth more than answering her question.

"Do you think we'll turn into them?"

Hermione blinks twice at the sting of the wind. "Into whom?"

"You know. Those people," Neville says, watching his toes curl beneath his socks. He has a habit of walking around in socks but no shoes. She thinks its a filthy habit, but when she let him know what she thought he only smiled patiently at her like walking around in socks was something she couldn't ever understand, and perhaps he's right. They are sitting on the steps on the front porch of the safe house with the chickens out back, and when the wind hits them just right, it carries with it the flavor of game and grass. The clouds are sifted low over the land.

Neville frowns. "You know. Our friends. Like some of your patients who begged you to slip them some Dreamless Sleep. Or like Ron. Have you noticed how often he goes out to fight? I saw him when he came back from Dorset last week, in the Stone House. He had three broken ribs and a concussion, and he was begging Kingsley to let him in the team scheduled for Tuesday. They just walk around all day like… I dunno…. Like they lost something. And they've forgot what it was, but they know that it was good."

She looks at Neville and she is a little alarmed, because she knows exactly the people he is talking about and sometimes she is one of them, but _he's_ always been the optimistic one. Jolly old smiling Neville. She thinks that she'll probably knit him socks for his birthday.

"I don't think so. Why should we? We're stronger than that. Both of us are," she says. There must be a bit of her uncertainty showing on her face because he is looking at her disbelievingly.

"How do we _not_? How do we—I just can't see how we can survive this. I mean _mentally_. It's not even the blood, or the injuries or that stuff that drives people mental. It's the waiting, and—I dunno—and living for one second at a time, and... Can you honestly see us living normal lives after the war?"

She looks at him again and it is the face of a young man dulled to the greys and greens and infirm pallor of drowned things, the trappings of war dangling from his fingertips, and she is frightened because she thought (wished) that he was the same person still.

Someone hung plastic vines with little plastic flowers from the rafters on the porch. It is perhaps someone who used to have these at home, and thought it would make the safe house seem less like a safe house. The plastic leaves sway stiffly in the wind making little plastic sounds.

Hermione used to be so good at being the mature one, at being the girl with all the answers.

"Honestly? I don't know, Neville. There is no way of knowing. But..."

She thinks of the boy who died—ages ago, it seems—the one who thought he could win the war all by himself. And of how he was just a little boy before it all started. She wishes she could have saved that boy. She wishes that she never met him, and that they had nothing at all to do with things like guilt and regret and all those messy things that have wormed their way into their young hearts.

But she is also the girl who reminds herself, day by day, that there is a reason for all this. That nothing is ever for nothing. There may be a war ballooning up all around them, but peace is here, sitting on the creaking porch with their bums making heart-shaped imprints in the dust. Peace is now. Peace promised at any other place or time is meaningless.

She wishes she were better at poetry so she could make Neville feel what it is she knows—all the way down to her marrow—is right. But she only has her old words and her unwieldy sentiments, and she hopes to God that they are enough. "I'm not pretending that I know what's going on here. But I think we fight so that those who come after us will never know the taste of blood. And they will be happy."

"Yes, but what about _us_? Don't _we_ deserve to be happy? How can I—How can we live knowing that this sort of thing is possible? Or that this kind of evil exists?"

Neville is breathing hard. He blushes when he catches her staring at him.

"I'm sorry, I don't mean to whine," he smiles apologetically. "I feel like a... Like a... Like a _stain_, sometimes, if that makes sense. Like a great big stain."

And yes, yes, yes, she feels it acutely in her gut, the pain, the futility, the vanity of words.

"You're not, Neville. You are—" Important? Loved? It all seemed like one big cliche to her so she cuts herself off.

"You know what's strange? You know how we started out, and we wondered if it would all go down in history? We pretended we didn't care, but really we all thought it would be neat to see our names go down in the books. We still do. But now... I'm convinced that all these years will turn into words someday. And theories. And discussions for _A History of Magic_ three generations down the line. And the war will be frightening to no one. Almost like it didn't matte—"

"Don't you dare say it, Neville," she says firmly. "We've got a lot, Neville. We've got so much. Don't you ever forget that. Don't you dare forget that."

He glances to the side. "I know, I'm sorry."

She places her palm on his knee. It is bonier than she remembers. "We were people before the war, and it can change us if it must, but we will still be people after it. And it _will_ matter. To _us_. To our children. It won't be for nothing."

"It's unfair, is all. We didn't ask for this."

"No one asks for this, Neville. But someone has to get it, and we are the people who fight so that others don't have t—"

"Run away with me, Hermione," he says suddenly.

"What?" She draws back from him.

"I'll keep you safe. I'll keep you... I'll keep you happy, you know I will," his face is earnest. Earnest Neville, with his round, shining eyes and his round, shining cheeks. So very earnest and eager and heartbreaking.

"We..." She laughs nervously. "You already know what I'm going to say."

"Of course. Yeah, of course I do." His smile is slow to crawl across his face. "It was a stupid joke anyway. Besides, can you imagine? I'd get us both killed within the first forty-eight hours."

Her face is frozen in a bewildered smile, but then she thinks that maybe he really was just joking. "You're so very _noble_, Neville," Hermione says, giving him a playful shove with her shoulder. "Will you keep me safe, oh noble knight?" she simpers at him. He tuts and huffs and shoves her back.

They sit there on the porch talking about how they will run away together in the cover of night and raise an entire brood of obnoxious, Potions-deficient, buck-toothed, clumsy children. They talk about their house, and how it will be full of specially-chosen junk arranged in perfect order and how they will live there together until they die. Their neighbours will hate them because their lawn will make everyone else's look like crap.

The conversation is exhilarating in its own way, leaving the both of them flushed and stirred with ludicrous possibility. They talk until they grow defiant with the idea of escape. In a sort of _take that!_ kind of way. Or a _what now?_

They talk until it gets too cold to be outdoors, and the night creeps in from the corners of the earth, and the stars hang loose from the limp night sky. It is all harmless talk. And then they go back inside to raid the cupboards for something warm to drink.

* * *

"Granger. I need to speak with you."

"Oh, hullo, Professor Snape!" Luna says cheerily across the table.

"_Alone_," Snape sneers. He is wearing a thin grey shirt despite the lack of heating in the Begonia House.

"I'll see you later, Luna," Hermione says. Luna just shrugs pleasantly and leaves,.

"What is it?" She thinks she should be worried by the uncharacteristic hesitation Snape is displaying. A thrill of _something_ kisses her spine.

Snape looks as though he is biting his tongue. "I did not wish to be the one to tell you this, but it seems that your _friends_ would have rather kept silent than inform you."

A tinny trickle of dread slips down the brackets of her spine. "Pardon?"

"I understand you are friends with Longbottom."

"I... yes... what are you saying..."

"Longbottom is gone. He never returned from the mission he was assigned to. It is highly likely that he's defected, the punishment for which, as you know, is death. Or he could be dead already." For all his earlier hesitation, he is ruthless now.

"That's not possible, I..." As if denying it will make it untrue. Her voice cracks.

Sometimes, if all you have is old words, the best you can do is put them together and hope they say something new.

"I'm sorry, Granger," Snape says quietly. He leaves the room. She loses herself to the white noise buzzing in her ears.

This war that thrives on bones, it lulls you into thinking that you can't lose any more. That it simply isn't possible. Like a clever magician it raises the curtains. Whispers the magic words. And then—_alakazam!_—you find that you had far less than you thought you did.

And where does that leave you?

Right about here.

Sitting, cursing, raging, swearing with your heart bit clean in two that you will burn and splinter before you let the war take anything else from you.

* * *

**A/N:**

I told you I'd be back! It's weird what a couple of months off will do for you. It definitely felt like forever, and I had a difficult time getting back into the mood of it. I hope it doesn't show too much, haha :)

Anyway, the plot is finally getting a move on. More to come soon!


	19. Nineteen

"We cannot afford to send out a search party."

Hermione rears back as if struck smack across the mouth. She knows better than most that war makes people cynical and reduces friends to the sum of their joists and gears and axles, but she'd never-never-never in her life thought that McGonagall was susceptible to that same economizing mentality.

McGonagall continues to hammer sentences out like a great big hand was fiddling with buttons on the back of her head, controlling the wooden movements of her jaw.

"It may seem to you like we are gaining the upper hand, but do not let the fleeting tide distract you. A search party would accomplish nothing but to divert much needed resources. Besides, all evidence points to the likelihood of Mr. Longbottom defecting."

Evidence, evidence, evidence. That's all it comes down to, isn't it?

"_Of course_ it does," Hermione replies, her voice prickly. Her head is swimming on the huge billows of oxygen she is sucking in through her nose. All the warning signs are there: clear vision, tightening chest, heartbeat lodged all the way up in the back of her mouth. All her body signs are telling her that she ought to cool off and think about what she is going to say. "Of course it _would_, if Neville were taken by people who don't want him to be found. All his belongings are still at the White House. His clothes, his books, his old Remembrall. He never goes anywhere without that sodding thing. He wouldn't just leave everything if he wanted out. He'd have nowhere to go. He'd have to start all over. If he defected like you say he did, he would have taken as much as he could."

"It seems as though you've given this a lot of thought," McGonagall says, raising her chin. For a moment, Hermione is intimidated. McGonagall was put in charge of the Combat Division for a reason. They say all the hotheads and trigger-happy idiots joined CD, and McGonagall with her storm-cloud brow and her barbed-wire stare was one of the few, now that Moody was gone, who could reign them in.

But Hermione knows well enough that she can have guts too when it counts. And it counts so, so much now, with Neville's life on the line. She grips her armrests and anchors her feet to the floor. If a tornado were to rip its way into McGonagall's office right now, they would find Hermione later still sitting in her chair among the wreckage, her nails stuck fast into the upholstery, bits of plaster in her hair.

"I _didn't_ help him leave, if that's what you're implying."

They stare at each other with eyes narrowed across the wide expanse of McGonagall's desk. McGonagall purses her lips. Frowns.

"If I were the type to play favourites, you would have been mine," McGonagall sighs tiredly.

"Oh. Um—"

"I'm sorry, Hermione. Even if you're right, even if he were captured, there is little we can do. The Death Eaters and their new allies—whoever they are—are well hidden. The attacks are few and far between, but far more vicious than they've ever been. We are barely winning, I know you know that. And what could they possibly want with Nevi—"

"They want to weaken us however they can! You said so yourself, we're short on everything. It's not like it's a big secret. They _knew_ this before _we_ did. It doesn't matter who they take, as long as they manage to reduce our forces even furth—"

"I hardly think that they would resort to picking off our numbers soldier by hapless soldier. It is highly impractical by any reasoning." McGonagall straightened in her chair. "Perhaps it's you who's been duped. Perhaps Mr Longbottom left his belongings to cover his tracks."

The room blurs all around her as Hermione shakes her head in short, angry bursts of movement. "Neville wouldn't do that. He doesn't... He _isn't_ some sort of... of..."

She wants to grab McGonagall by the hand and Apparate her to Neville's room.

Look.

Here's his suitcase.

I helped him magically expand it.

Look, here's his tin of chocolate frog cards. He hasn't got Andros the Invincible yet, but he said he's sure to come across it soon.

Law of averages.

Look, here are the socks I got him last Christmas. I know he doesn't really like them, and he only wears them when I'm around so I won't feel bad.

Look, see these? These are his combat boots. The laces are all bloody from old fights, but he can't be bothered to clean them.

Look, there's his stupid Mimbulus Mimbletonia.

Look, this is the air Neville recycled in the hothouse of his lungs for the past three weeks.

Look, look, look, look, why won't you look?

"I know him, McGonagall. We're friends. I _know_ hi—"

"I think you're forgetting that I was his Head of House for seven years, Miss Granger," McGonagall says tightly. Hermione slides her gaze up, expecting a look of reproach, and is surprised when she sees McGonagall passing a hand over her eyes instead. The gesture is discordantly childlike. McGonagall keeps her hand like a corrugated barrier between her and the outside world. "Mister Longbottom left. You must acknowledge this and move on. We will not actively pursue him, but if we find him..."

"You'll kill him."

"We will deal with him as we see fit, Hermione. He was a good soldier, a comrade, and a friend, but we cannot allow desertion to remain unpunished. You are a good soldier too. It would do you well to keep your toe in line."

Hermione releases her death grip on the armrests, arches her feet. If a tornado were to come ripping in now, she would be blown away with the rest of the scraps.

"I hope _to God_ Neville gets a shot at what he's looking for before your lot make an example of him."

That storm-cloud brow. That barbed-wire stare. Beneath it all is an exhausted woman well past her prime, rusted over with the dead weight of age. A bundle of folds and visible sinew and varicose veins that are collectively labelled Minerva McGonagall.

"So do I, girl. So do I."

* * *

"Alright—_gently_, Terry—just set him down here. Are you okay? Do you need medical attention? Let me see that cu—"

"I'm fine, Hermione."

"Come on, just let me see i—"

"I said I'm _fine_, Hermione."

"Oh... Okay."

"No, look... I'm... I'm sorry. Just get to Snape. I don't think... Something's not right with him. We got separated from the group. He was being really reckless. I kept yelling at him to take cover but he would have none of it. There shouldn't have been any trouble. There were only three Death Eaters at the hideout. They had Muggle smoke bombs with them, and we didn't expect it. I lost sight of Snape. I had to Portkey back."

Terry glances guiltily to the side. Hermione realises that the only reason he helped her bring Snape in was because he felt bad for leaving him behind.

"What happened to the Death Eaters?"

"We've got one in custody at the Ministry. The other two... I guess they got away."

"What would the Death Eaters be doing with Muggle smoke bombs?"

"I don't know, alright?" He scratches his neck irritably and huffs out a breath. "Just help that git. He's bleeding out his head."

Terry detaches himself from Hermione's grip and stalks off to the bathroom. She hears the gushing of the pipes, and then the sudden nubby hushing that indicates a Silencing Charm.

She can't get over it.

The image of Snape face down in a ditch. His hair a daubing of black ink around his head like some sort of blasphemous halo. The darkness of it indistinguishable from the blood. His face wet and gleaming, his eyes closed, his mouth sealed when she turned him over. How he gasped for air and clutched at her jumper when she pulled his head out of the brackish puddle and dug the mud out of his eye sockets. How pinching his glare was when he realised who was holding him, like he would rather melt into the dirt than have her touch him.

She'd been offended, of course, and had half a mind to leave him there. She clung to the offense because it was better than crying.

The scene was, overall, rather romantic. Milk-and-water mist. The sound of raging battle. An air of decay, of grace departed to some far away forever, of paling regret. The smoke added a nice touch.

And then she shook it off because she had a job to do.

Without saying a thing she fished for her Emergency Portkey, took it out of the orange rag it was wrapped in to prevent accidental activation, and pressed it into his stiff fingers. There was the tug of magical travel and then she was kneeling on the front yard of the Stone House, Snape's head held crooked and heavy in her arms. She yelled for help and wrangled Terry into pulling Snape into the house. There were other people inside, and they all craned their necks to catch a glance of the newest notch to the list of the injured. But when Hermione asked if there were any medics or trainees on duty, the clog of curious onlookers withheld eye contact and dispersed, leaving her with the task of patching Snape up.

And now here they are, two refugees from battle sitting in kitchen. The chairs are rickety. The sound of creaking wood along with the background noise of the television from the other room is enough to set her teeth on edge.

Snape slumps silent and belligerent at the table as Hermione mops up the mess on his temple. The smell of blood scalds her sinuses. He holds his body as if it is strung with wire, and jumps as she moves aside the black tapering swath of his hair.

"I'm trying to help you, would you hold still?"

She dabs at the tear in his skin with a cotton ball, holding his hair back with one hand. He jerks his head back at the sting of antiseptic. Unthinkingly, she brings a hand up to his jaw to steady him. His cheek is gritty against her palm. Despite the proximity they share, he might as well be locked inside a titanium vault and buried at the bottom of the sea for all she could reach of him. Silence can be a good thing sometimes, and she hopes that this is one of those cases.

His voice sounds groggy and old, like something dredged up from a pit in the ground. "What is it exactly that you are trying to achieve, Granger?"

She is calm. She is calm. She is calm.

There is canned laughter from the tv in the other room. Someone guffaws in response. Cowards.

"Stop talking or your wound will start gushing again. We're short on analgesics. You're going to have to sleep this one out." Her manner is practiced and professional. She is rather proud of herself. She steps back from her handiwork. "This is probably going to scar."

He huffs out a breath, as if starting to laugh but then changing his mind halfway through.

"I know you don't care," she mutters to herself, taking a mental catalogue of the fading bruises and mottling yellowed scabs grotesquely ornamenting what is visible of his skin—marks of last week's missions, and of last month's, and last years. A whole lifetime of war-born blemishes.

"I know you don't care," she says more loudly, "but you ought to be more careful. We're short on people, you know, and you're an experienced fighter. We can't lose you. They probably would have bumped you up in rank already, if it wasn't for... well..."

He turns his head to look at her for the first time. The sneer on his face matches his bruises.

"For what?"

"Nothing. Sorry. I wasn't thinking."

"Finish your sentence, Granger."

"No."

"For my killing Dumbledore. For my not dying. For my leaving you with Greyback. Is that what you were going to say?"

Hermione rosses to the sink and washes her hands. Her clothes cling and bunch to her skin at every movement, sticky and heavy with blood, sweat, and all the other remnants of battle. "I need to go get changed. You're going to be alright here, aren't you? You can take the spare bedroom. I'll go bunk on the couch."

She is calm. She is calm. She is calm.

"_I left you to die_, girl. I left you to be raped and torn apart by a vicious murderer. I called you a Mudblood whore. I maligned you in the most thorough, most irrevocable way possible. Aren't you afraid I'll drive a knife between your shoulder blades as you leave?"

She stiffens and anchors her arms to the edge of the sink, watching the dirty water spiral down the drain and breathing hard. She has the suspicion that all he wants from her is to crack at the edges and let loose all the pent up things inside of her so he can fling her all time lows back in her face like he does so well. She can pick on her _own_ scabs without his help, thank you very much.

She points her wand at him and smiles as he looks up at her in shock. Green ropes shoot out of her wand and wrap around his shoulders, pinning him to the chair.

"Not so much, now."

"You _bitch_," he spits.

"Do you _want_ me to hate you?" she says quietly, "Or do you want me to forgive you? Because it really seems to me like you want both. And you can't have both because I'm spread out too thin as it is and barely have any left of me for myself." She is fighting for control with every passing second. Something is bound to give, and it won't be in front of him. She holds out on the hope that she doesn't blow out here.

She'd meant for the ropes to be a joke, but it was funnier in her head and only seemed mean-spirited in reality.

"This is a superficial wound. It won't kill me. Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what, healing you? Because you are my ally. Nothing more. You're not important to me, Snape."

He strains against his ropes and she steps forward on reflex as the chair tips at a dangerous angle. She'd hate for him to crack his head open again. He stops struggling at her movement. Looks up. In the other room, the tv drones on mindlessly. She glances at the door, half expecting someone to burst in.

"Kiss me and I'll show you how important I am."

His voice is more feeling than sound. Her gut is a dead weight. Her palms are clammy-pale little things dangling from her is how it is with him. Everything about him is more _feeling_ than anything else. She remembers how he used to make her feel, and how he makes her feel now.

_Jesus_, he really is something else. He shoves her away from him when she tries to help and yanks her back when she gets enough space to breathe and think a little bit. Just when she gets used to the idea of never getting anything from him until she steals it from him, moulds it to her fingertips and pulls with all her weight behind it, he goes and says a thing like that. She doesn't know where he gets the gall.

_Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me_, plays in a sickening loop in her head.

He looks at her with chilling, cut-throat expectation, just waiting for her to leak an ounce of weakness into the atmosphere so he can capitalize on it like the shark that he is.

There is this idea of Severus Snape. She can hold his chin and heal his wounds and she'd feel the warmth of flesh under her fingertips. He'd _feel_ human, certainly, but there is always something off, some glaring chip that doesn't fit anywhere. Like a phantom limb. You get your arm chopped off at the elbow and you wake up with your thumb itching like hell, or your pinkie cramped into a knot, and you move your hand to fix it, but there is nothing there.

Snape the amputated appendage. Snape the bag of angst and neuroses. Snape the perpetual motion machine, breeding rust in his gaskets.

Whether he is more or less than what he seems to be, she isn't sure she is ready to find out. Not yet. Not now.

With a flick of her wand the ropes vanish and Snape lurches like a drunk to his feet, and the smack of the chair against the tile reverberates around them both. He makes no move toward her. He just stares at her like he is trying to tell her something, and that she ought to know what this something is already, and that the fact that she doesn't understand disappoints him deeply.

"I don't know what you're trying to prove, Snape, but you better bloody well get it together. The next time you get hit like that you're likely going to die, and no one else but me in this entire fucking war wants nothing to do with healing you."

She is calm. She is calm. She is calm.

Snape's lips crumple into a sneer, but then a huff of air escapes and before she knows it, he is laughing. It is painfully fake and grating, but it is laughter nonetheless. The sound of it peals over her like nails on a chalkboard and makes her very, very angry. She hasn't got the time to deal with his mental instability. His laughter creeps to a halting close as she turns to walk away.

"I'm just… I'm just as fucked up as they say, Granger," she hears him—_barely_—whisper at her retreating back. She almost turns back. She's weak when it comes to this sort of thing, but she knows that turning back would be exactly what he wants. Exactly what he doesn't want to want. Or something.

She bumps into a bewildered Terry on her way out.

"You alright?" he asks, catching her by the shoulder. Terry just got back from the shower, and one of his eyes is nothing more than a grey slit peering out of a raw, pink swelling of eye socket.

"Yeah, it's just…" She huffs out a sigh and jerks her head in the general direction of the impossible man sitting in the kitchen. Terry rolls his eyes and gives her a commiserating look. As she peels of her soiled clothing in her room, she can't help feeling that—despite Snape's goading—she'd somehow done wrong by him.

* * *

She has a list of questions. She doesn't write this list down because she can hardly stand thinking it in her head, and to see it in ink, on paper, in her own handwriting, would be almost too much to bear.

Question one: Did she save Snape's life?

Answer: Yes. Most certainly. There's no way out of that one.

Question two: Why?

Answer: Because no one else would. Because he is on their side. Because… because…

Question three: Does she forgive him?

Answer: Forgive him for what? He said so himself. War is where virtue is mathematics and sacrifices are statistics. What is there to forgive?

She knows herself well enough at this point to see that this is a lie. That she hasn't forgiven him at all, and all this dodging is just her way of concealing the fact that she is just as capable of holding a grudge as any other mortal.

So, why _did_ she heal him? Why is it that she knows with complete certitude that, give the chance, she'd do it again? Saving his life is understandable. They are at war, after all, and they need all the soldiers they can get. But healing him, defending him to other people, feeling enough about him to warrant a questioning of her own motivations…

Touching herself to thoughts of him…

Question four: Does she want him?

Answer:

Question five: Does _he_ want _her_?Is he simply mocking her? Does he just want to take whatever he can get? Is she just a substitute for him?

Answer:

"Bloody hell," she whispers, throwing herself backward on the bed and flinging a pillow over her face.

* * *

_Crack!_

The sound batters its way through the shapelessness of her dream. She sits up—one arm scrabbling madly for her wand on the coffee table—convinced that there'd been a car crash inside her skull. Her heart is gripped by terror because the safe houses were supposed to be _safe_, and she isn't ready for this illusion to be shattered along with all the others. Her feet skid on the floor as she rounds the corner to the kitchen. In her head ring the words: Something is wrong. Something is wrong. Something is wrong.

She knows a moment of confusion as she realizes that she fell asleep on the sofa and if there were intruders in the house, she should have been dead already. Slowly her eyes adjust to the moving figures outlined against the bright yellow of the kitchen lights.

"You better apologize or Hermione's going to kill you."

"Sorry, sorry, that was my bad. I'll clean it up."

Hermione squints. Rubs her eyes. "Whashappenin…"

"Bloody butterfingers over here dropped a stack of dishes. Alright, Hermione?" Dean grins at her from his lazy sprawl at the table, his chair tipped a few degrees backward like he always sat at school. The desk-bound boy—Ian McEwan—who doesn't look so desk-bound now, with his hair rumpled and his mouth stretched in a sheepish grimace, nods at her from the floor as he cleans up the multi-coloured shards of his accident.

"Are you having… _cereal_?" She gapes at Dean.

"Yeah, why not?"

"It's…" She glances at the wall clock. "It's two thirty in the morning."

"Hmm," Dean frowns, looking at the watch around his wrist, "You're right. Want some?"

"I guess I'm awake anyway." She isn't, though. Hermione finds herself sagging against her arm, trying desperately to keep up with the conversation as Ian sets three bowls of milk-soaked fruit loops on the table. She manages to nod along at key points. The sugar crunch of children's cereal doesn't help her stay awake.

"So you're one of the new guys," Dean says around a mouthful of colourful junk.

"Yeah." Ian scratches his nose. "Two months in. I saw a guy killed accidentally in training, once."

"Shit. How old are you?"

"Me? Almost seventeen."

"They let you join when you were only sixteen?"

"Nope. I lied."

"They check for that, you know."

"Apparently not. I'm here, aren't I?"

"Well… are you scared?"

Hermione feels her head steadily gaining in weight, her neck slowly tipping forward inch by inch into her cereal. In her head their voices are diluted into an unreal, calming hum. Someone moves her bowl out of the way, and she grunts in thanks, watching the black of sleep creep in at the corners of her vision. The plastic sheet protecting the table top sticks to her cheek. She's never been more comfortable in her whole life.

_Crack!_

She chokes on a glob of spit and pushes her head off the table.

"—be bloody careful and watch where you're go—"

"I already apologized, you twat! I don't see what the pro—"

"You don't see what the problem is because you're head's up your bloody arse the whole time!"

It is Dean yelling viciously at Ian, his arms whirling in messy circles all over the place.

"Dean, come off it," she cuts in tiredly, trying to rub the floating specks of interrupted sleep out of her vision. Her brain is still reeling from a second bout of arbitrary and unexpected ignition.

"This fucking idiot got milk all over my picture!" Dean turns to her, jabbing a finger at Ian to prove his point. "_God_, you are such a useless piece of—"

"What's the fucking problem? So spell it off! Are you a fucking wizard or wha—"

"Are you calling me a Mudblood? Is that it? Are you calling me a bloody Mudblood?" Dean whispers, grabbing a handful of Ian's pajamas and hauling him a foot closer into his space.

The silence encloses the three of them in a thick, noxious bubble. She's never seen Dean so angry outside of battle. His joints are stiff, his movements harsh, and he reminds her of a machine broken down. She almost expects to hear the rattling of loose scrap metal as his knuckles tighten around Ian's shirt.

Around their feet is a rainbow of sodden fruit loops, and she wonders just how clumsy Ian can possibly be.

"That's not what I said," Ian says with remarkable calm, and the bubble breaks. Dean's face contorts into something grotesque and alien. He works his lips around a word that can't quite get out and gives up, shoving Ian away from him so hard that his bones crack against the floor and the air slams right out of him. Dean backs away slowly, disbelief lined into his features.

"Dean!" Hermione gasps, her head now completely knocked out of its torpor. She rushes to Ian and pulls him up by the elbow. "That's not what Ian said at all! What's wrong with you?"

"I... God, I'm sorry," Dean mutters, swallowing convulsively, putting his hands up as if to bunch his hair, then yanking them back restlessly to his sides. He looks as though his heart is falling down, down, down through his ribcage and down, down, down through a hole in the floor, but he hasn't realised what's happened yet. It drives Hermione to stunned silence because she knows it well, that aching-gut feeling. That fallen heart feeling.

Dean smiles at them in apology, and it is a look that is all teeth and gaping veiny threads in his neck. He moves like someone who wants nothing more out of life than to disappear, catching his hip against the corner of the table as he leaves the room. The table shudders in protest.

"Geez," Ian wheezes, rubbing his chest and shaking his head. He looks at Hermione and laughs nervously. She can tell that he is one of those people that laughs in an attempt to dispel whatever big and awkward and straining somethings have taken over the room, just like her. So she laughs along.

"What do you reckon's got into him?"

"I dunno," she says slowly. "He's just..."

She trails off because she doesn't know what to say anymore.

He's just one of those people. You know. Those people who find it so hard to forget pain, and harder still to remember sweetness. Because we have no scars for happiness. He is one of those people who are fine one day and then suddenly they are bombs leaking radiation into everyone's air, cells bursting outward forever and ever.

"He's just... you know, tired."

"Oh. Yeah. I guess. It's pretty late. I think we should all get some rest."

* * *

It is still one of the oddest things in the world, watching Snape moving around the kitchen. He seems completely at ease with the Muggle appliances, opening the dishwasher and retrieving a mug from it without any problems. He also manages to work the microwave rather effortlessly. He sets the timer to three minutes and leaves the room, returning at precisely the second the timer starts beeping. It's that faultless internal body clock at work, no doubt. All the while, it's as if she isn't even in the room.

He starts opening and closing drawers like he is looking for something. On a hunch, Hermione pulls open the drawer next to her and hands him a teaspoon. He looks at her like she is crazy, and she is starting to think that she guessed wrong and he is actually looking for something else when he pulls the teaspoon from her hand. She feels the pressure of his grip against the handle of the teaspoon, and then the cold metal slips from her grasp.

He is one of those people who are loud stirrers, a trait that Hermione always hated. It fits him, somehow. The clink-clink-clink of metal against porcelain fills the silence, and she won't doubt it if he is doing it on purpose.

She doesn't know where she stands with him. She never knows. She is also afraid that this might be a big clue into why she is so drawn to him, and of what this says about her.

"I thought you didn't like me doing you any favors," she says stiffly, leaning her hip against the counter and raising her eyebrow at his reflection in the kitchen window. His skin is stark white against the night's stark black. The word dichotomy comes to her mind unbidden.

He taps the spoon against the rim of his mug and sends it floating to the sink with a flick of his finger.

"Don't be melodramatic," he says lowly. Somehow he manages to convey his sneer without even looking at her.

"Well, you're welcome," she calls out at his retreating back.

* * *

**A/N:**

I know there's not much SSHG interaction here, but I wanted to cut down on my chapter length as well as get some plot stuff through. Promise there will be more SSHG goodness in the next chapter! And by more I mean... MORE. *_wink, wink_*


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